China In my plate 1/2

Fish Manchurian

Prawns and Fish Fried Rice

Serves Two

Preparation time:

Cutting/Chopping – 5mins

Preparing the marinade & marinating time – 35mins

Cooking time – 7-10mins

Ingredients:

Fish – Sheri (local Qatari fish) – 120gms

White Onion (medium size) – 3/4

Spring Onion – 1no

Capsicum – Yellow – 1/8

Capsicum – Green – 1/8

Ginger chopped – 1tbsp

Garlic chopped – 1tbsp

Green Chilli – 1no

Mixed Vegetables (Frozen – Carrots, Green Peas and Corn) – 30gms

Corn Flour – 3tbsp (1 for the marinade and 2 for the sauce)

Soy Sauce – 1tsp (½ for the marinade and ½ for the sauce)

Cashew nuts – 10nos

Lemon juice – 1/8tsp (Just 4-5 drops)

Vinegar – ¼tsp

Red Chilli Powder – ¼tsp

Ground Black Pepper – 1/8tsp

Sesame Oil – 2tbsp (1 each for frying the fish and for the main cooking)

Salt

How I cut them:

I cut the fish into pieces of around 5cm long x 3cm wide pieces.

I cut the vegetables also into large size pieces. For the onion, I first divided it into two equal parts at the equator and then cut each piece radially into six equal pieces since I had used only 3/4^th of an onion for this dish. Similarly the Capsicum and the Spring Onion was also cut into large pieces, having rough dimensions of 4cm to 5cm each.

I chopped the chilly, garlic and ginger into medium sized pieces.

I cut the cashews into halves.

How I cooked it:

I took half of the chopped chilli+garlic+ginger into a stone pounder and added the ground black pepper and pound them well into a rough paste.

I then moved this paste into a bowl, tossed in the fish cubes, soy sauce, corn flour, lemon juice and mixed them well with my hand. When I saw that the fish cubes were coated well in the mix, I covered the bowl with a plastic wrap and left in the fridge for half an hour.

While this mix was being marinated, I copped/cut all the vegetables.

By the end of 30mins, I heated sesame oil in a skillet and fried the fish. When the fish was done, I left it aside.

Then, I heated sesame oil in a wok over high flame. I swirled the wok around to ensure that the oil had coated the wok well till the top, rather than just staying settled at the bottom.

When the wok was hot and ready, I tossed in the remaining half of the chilli+garlic+ginger mix. 

After around 30secs or so, I added in all the vegetables in the wok and cooked them by tossing intermittently, which went on for a minute or so, after which I added in the cashew nuts, mixing them into the vegetables.

When the mix was turning brown, I added a cup of water and the remaining corn flour into the bowl in which I had marinated the fish and poured the mix in the wok.

I cooked the mix by continuously stirring it and, in between added the remaining soy sauce and vinegar. In about 3-4mins the watery mix had coagulated into thick gravy. The dish was ready!

 

The experience:

I was very happy with what I cooked. This recipe is good. It had a very authentic Chinese taste and I can openly vouch that, I can cook Chinese dishes well. I have come a long long way from the disastrous Chicken Manchurian that I had cooked way back in 2001.

However, this may not be the recipe for you if you are a pucca mallu food eater. For that, you’ll have to look up an Indianised Chinese recipe. Plenty of them are available in the net.  

If you are a connoisseur of authentic Chinese food, please try this and let me know your opinion. I really want to know how good/bad this one is.