Pan Fried Baby-corn Chili:
Have you tasted the tangy and spicy and sweet and salty Indo-Chinese Manchurians and chillies like Chicken chilli, Mushroom Manchurian, honey chilli potatoes.. in any roadside food stalls?? They toss an array of things in a sizzling hot pan in front of you and the dish is ready in a thrice, smoking hot & pricked with toothpicks! I cooked up my first Gobhi Manchurian at a Bul-Bul camp, when I was 12 years old. I had always wanted to recreate that taste. So i got to work. whenever I saw a cauliflower head or a bunch of baby corn I would chop them up, fry them & toss them around in all kinds of sauces I could get my hands on. The result was, initially inedible, but there was gradual improvement till I could finally start priding myself on a few good Indo-Chinese dishes.
Recently I tried a non deep fried version of chilli and I was liked by everyone in my house. I shared the recipe with few of my friends and they were raving about it. It tastes just as good and crispy as if it were deep fried. This is the recipe I stick to now a days for a quick snack.
Ingredients:
For the batter:
- Baby corn - 10 to 12 chopped into bite sized pieces.
- Flour - 1/2 cup
- Cornstarch - 1/2 cup
- salt - to taste
- vegetable oil - 2 to 3 tbs
For the sauce:
- Onion, roughly chopped - 1 small
- Green Chilies - 2-4 (or as per your spice preference)
- Ginger, finely chopped - 1 tbs
- Garlic, finely chopped - 1 - 1 1/2 tbs
- Spring onion, finely chopped (whites & greens separated) - 2 springs
- Soy sauce - 1 tsp
- Red chilli sauce - 1 to 2 tbs
- Tomato ketchup - 1/2 to 1 tbs
- Salt or Chinese salt (MSG) - to taste
- Sugar - a pinch or two
- vegetable oil - 1 to 2 tbs
Method:
1. Boil 2 - 3 cups of water in a vessel. Add 2 tsp salt and the baby corn pieces to this. Let it steam for 10 min. turn off heat and strain the baby corn pieces. Keep aside. Mix all the batter ingredients except for the baby corn pieces. Add water little by little and mix well to make a thick batter. Add the baby corn pieces to this batter and toss to coat well.
2. Heat 1 - 2 tbs vegetable oil in a pan. Place the battered baby corn on the pan in a single layer without overlapping. .
Save the rest of the batter!! we will use it later ;)
3. Shallow fry on medium heat till one side is browned. Flip to the other side and cook till both the sides are golden brown and crispy.
4. Drain off excess oil.
5. Keep everything chopped and ready.
6. Heat oil in a pan till it is smoking hot. Add the chopped ginger, garlic chillies onions and spring onions(only the white part). Saute on high heat for 1 minute.
7. Add the sauces. Taste it and adjust salt & sugar.
9. Mix it up rapidly ! If you don't, the added batter will harden to form lumps.
10. Let the sauce come to boil and thicken.
11. Add the baby corn pieces to the sauce & toss to coat all the pieces in it.
12. garnish with spring onion green and serve immediately.
