San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Dunk crispy vegetable balls in a spicy, tangy gravy
Seasonal riff on Indo-Chinese favorite features shredded Brussels sprouts
Growing up in Mumbai, our go-to family-night dinner was on Sunday. We would look forward to trying a new restaurant, although in the 1980s, there weren’t many different cuisines. We would go to restaurants that served North Indian cuisine, or fast-food spots for pizza and burgers, and of course Indo-Chinese restaurants.
I came up with a riff on Vegetable Manchurian, one of my favorites from when we frequented Indo-Chinese restaurants. The dish features vegetarian balls made of shredded cabbage, carrots, green onions, garlic and ginger, fried to golden brown perfection.
The vegetarian version originated from Chicken Manchurian, which is believed to have come from Nelson Wang, a third-generation Chinese chef born in Kolkata, India. He fried chicken and doused it in a sauce made with ginger, garlic and green chiles — key parts of Bengali cuisine — along with Chinese staples like soy sauce and chile sauce. The chef went on to open Mumbai’s famous China Garden restaurant, where I had the pleasure of dining many times during my childhood.
For my version, I wanted the main ingredient to be an in-season vegetable: Brussels sprouts.
Brussels sprouts have an acquired taste, and over the years I have come to love it. Preparation is key. Roasting the sprouts with olive oil and spices gives the dish so much flavor. I especially love the small bits that crisp up in the oven. Every holiday season, I roast Brussels sprouts and toss them with a cumin-coriander vinaigrette, dates, walnuts and pomegranate arils. (The recipe can be found in my cookbook, “Mumbai Modern.”)
For the Manchurian dish, you’ll need to shred the Brussels sprouts, carrots and bell peppers. You could use a grater, but it will take a long time. Trust me, you’ll want to use a food processor for efficiency.
I use the essentials of any IndoChinese dish — ginger, garlic, green chiles — to flavor the Manchurian balls, along with all-purpose flour and cornstarch to bind them. The key to getting spheres is to press a portion in your palm and use your fingers to shape it into a ball. The vegetables release liquid, which helps keep the balls together. They are fried until golden brown.
Since you’ll use some vegetables in both the balls and the gravy, I suggest chopping or shredding them at the same time. Once the ingredients are prepped, the Manchurian gravy comes together easily. A mixture of ginger, garlic and green chile is sauteed in oil, along with green onions. Next we add soy sauce, dark soy sauce, vinegar, chile sauce, ketchup, salt and pepper. Dark soy sauce, which is deeper in color, thicker and sweeter than the standard, is key to adding color as well as flavor — it’s my own special touch. I like mushroom-flavored dark soy sauce, which is available at Asian markets.
A cornstarch slurry is necessary to thicken the gravy. After the sauce is simmered for a few minutes, the Brussels sprout balls get dunked in. I love serving this dish with a simple vegetable fried rice, but plain rice would work, too.
Even better, leftovers heat up well in the microwave the next day. Add a few tablespoons of water, to get the right gravy consistency, prior to serving.