SO.
You’ve made your Indian Sweet and Sour Sauce and the Garlic-Ginger Paste (and how to juice ginger). You’ve found those cunning, little baby corn thingys (I went with canned, since the corn needed to be cooked anyway), AND, the surprisingly hard-to-find corn flour (Masa), which, as it happens, any market with a decent Hispanic Foods section will have.
Let us make this sucker!
INGREDIENTS
Fried Baby Corn:
•2 cans baby corn, drained, rinsed and sliced in half
•4 tsp garlic-ginger paste
•1/8 tsp salt (I used my seasoned salt)
•1/2 tsp Cayenne
•1/2 cup corn flour
•1/4 cup all-purpose flour
•Water to make the batter – I used 1-1/2 cup and the batter was a touch on the thin side, next time I will try 1 cup
•Canola oil, for frying
Sauce:
•1 tbsp garlic-ginger paste
•1 tbsp ginger juice
•1 tbsp soy sauce – I use low salt
•2 tsp white vinegar
•1/2 cup sweet & sour sauce
•1/2 tsp cumin
•1/2 tsp sugar
•1/2 tsp black pepper
•1 onion, diced
•3 green chiles, slit and seeded – if you’d like a spicier dish, leave in some of the seeds
•1/2 green Bell pepper, diced
•4 or 5 scallions, sliced – white and light green parts separated from the darker stalks
•Salt, to taste
•2 tsp corn flour dissolved in 1/4 cup water
•Freshly chopped parsley
Combine the garlic-ginger paste with the salt, Cayenne, corn flour, and all-purpose flour together in a bowl and add water, stirring, to make a batter. Note that mine was a touch too thin, I think, so add the water gradually and stir and judge until you get a nice consistency.
Heat oil in a deep fryer to 375º – I got this wicked nizzah mini-fryer for Christmas and LOVE it. It is not a good tool for frying chicken for 20 (or, mebbe even 6), but is perfectly suited for the amount, and types of food, that I am likely to consider deep frying. For this recipe, as with the Squid-Bit Tempura, I did not use the fryer basket, because the batter would cause the corn to stick to the grid, but frying the corn in batches and pulling them out with a spider worked a treat. If you don’t have a deep fryer, heat oil in a large, deep pan.
Drop your drained, rinsed, and halved baby corn into the batter and stir around to coat.
Remove the coated corn with a slotted spoon (remember, my batter was on the thin side – if it were as thick as I think it should have been, I would have pulled the corn out with tongs, and shaken it a bit to remove any excess.
Drop the corn into the oil in batches – don’t crowd the pan and try to do it all at once – and cook for 5 or 6 minutes, until the batter is golden brown.
Remove to a rack and fry the remaining corn pieces.
Set aside. Don’t worry about keeping it warm at this point, it’ll be going into a stir fry at the end.
Hey, I said this recipe was g-o-o-o-d, I never said it was simple.
Combine the ginger juice with the soy sauce, vinegar, sweet and sour sauce, cumin, sugar, and pepper and set aside.
Heat 2 tablespoons of oil (I used 1 tbsp unsalted butter and 1 tbsp olive oil) in a large sauté pan over medium heat – stirring until the butter (if you use it) is melted and blended with the oil.
Add the garlic-ginger paste, the onion, and the green chiles.
Cook, stirring, for 5 or 6 minutes, until the onion is transparent.
Add the green Bell pepper and cook, stirring for 1 minute more.
Turn the heat to high, add the ginger juice mixture, and cook for 1 minute.
Add the fried baby corn, chopped parsley, and the white and light-green bits of scallion, then sprinkle with the corn flour dissolved in water and cook, stirring constantly, until the sauce thickens nicely.
Serve sprinkled with the dark green scallion.
Nice – even if my batter was a bit thin – and now that I’ve done all the research and shopping to make THIS recipe, I’ve found an alternate, mixed veggie, version that looks even better!
Coming soon, I think…