Cabbage Manchurian

How much ever we hate China and plan to boycott Chinese goods, we will never be bored of these so called Indian Chinese dishes. The fact is we Indians love these manchurian and enjoys it paired with our fried rice or noodles, isn’t it? I do enjoy making these as Neha loves it, but honestly speaking,

I do not like to eat any of these dishes and would any day prefer a simple cabbage stir fry or cabbage poriyal or thoran 🙂 This is quite similar to the vegetable manchurian where we mix finely chopped vegetables and bind it using flour and then fry them in hot oil. These small balls are then tossed in a sauce and finally garnished with finely chopped spring onion greens. The only difference is that here we are using only cabbage as the main ingredient.

Like in any such recipe, if you plan and chop all the veggies before hand and keep it ready, you just need few minutes to get this done. Just to make this dish a bit healthier, I have fried the balls in an “appe pan” or “kuzhi paniyaram” pan with just a drizzle of oil. You may choose to deep fry them in hot oil for a more crispier effect. This pairs beautifully with paneer fried rice or vegetable hakka noodles. For more such recipes, please click here.

Ingredients:

• Cabbage 1 small
• Salt to taste
• Pepper powder to taste
• All purpose flour 2 tbsp
• Cornflour 1 tbsp + 2 tsp
• Rice flour 1 tbsp
• Ginger one inch piece
• Garlic 3-4 cloves
• Red chili flakes to taste
• Soy sauce 3 tsp
• Tomato sauce 1-2 tbsp
• Red chili sauce 2 tsp
• Onion 1
• Capsicum 1 small
• Spring onions 4-5
• Sugar 1 tsp
• Oil 3-4 tbsp

Method:

• Wash and chop the cabbage finely. Squeeze and remove excess water if desired.
• Cut the onion and capsicum into big chunks. Chop the ginger, garlic and spring onions finely.

• Transfer the cabbage into a big mixing bowl.
• Add salt, pepper powder, red chili flakes, all purpose flour, cornflour and the rice flour into the chopped cabbage.

• Add few ginger pieces into it and mix well.
• If the mixture appears too dry, add a spoon of water to it and if the mixture is too loose, add little flour to it. The resulting batter should be a thick sticky batter.

• Place an appe pan or paniyaram pan and brush it with oil.
• Pour a spoonful of batter into each cavity. Cover and cook on low flame for 3-4 minutes. Flip and cook the other side too till it’s golden on both sides.

• Remove and drain on an absorbent paper.

• Heat an iron wok and add 1-2 tbsp of oil to it.
• Add the finely chopped garlic-ginger and cook for a minute.
• Now add the onion and capsicum and saute on high flame for a minute or two.

• Add soy sauce, chili sauce and tomato sauce. Season with salt, red chili flakes and pepper powder.
• To this mixture, now add the fried cabbage balls and toss gently.

• Mix two teaspoons of cornflour in 2 tablespoons of water and make a slurry.
• Add this to the cabbage balls mixture and cook.
• Sprinkle some sugar to balance out the flavours.
• Finally, garnish with finely chopped spring onions and serve it hot with fried rice or hakka noodles.

Notes:

• Add salt carefully since soy sauce has a good amount of salt in it.
• Make sure that the onion and capsicum do not become limp due to over cooking.
• You may try baking these cabbage balls at 180 degree Celsius for around 20-25 minutes or alternatively, it can be deep fried as the original recipe calls for.