Veg Chili Tofu Gravy

Indo-Chinese is the second most sought-after cuisine in meri Dilli after the diverse North Indian cuisine.

Chinese food vans parked amidst busy sector markets or dotted aside the ever-buzzing Delhi roads, can make me happy the moment I spot one. The feeling is akin to a child spotting an ice-cream vendor. Not that I love ice-cream any less! But my appetite for Indo-Chinese is so huge that I have to stop myself from digging into it.

These food vans serve treasures of authentic Indo-Chinese food to Dilliwalas, hot, spicy with a huge menu ranging from chowmein or noodles in different sauces, bubbling soups and chili chicken or chili paneer to suit both the vegetarians and non-vegetarians.

This Veg Chili Tofu Gravy recipe is inspired by the Chinese food vans of Delhi. When I tried the Veg Chili Tofu recipe a few weeks back and served it for dinner with Veg Fried Rice, I felt the dish needed more quantity of gravy or sauce in order to be eaten with rice. So this Veg Chili Tofu Gravy recipe makes more sense when you want to serve it for dinner accompanied with rice or noodles. Read more about Tofu and its health benefits in this post. Tofu is made from soybean and is easily available in your local supermarket. Go ahead and replace the tofu with paneer or cottage cheese cubes and the taste would still be the same.

The Veg Chili Tofu recipe I posted earlier in February is better off as a starter or a snack. There is hardly any difference between the two recipes the only thing I subtracted is the chili sauce and added more corn flour to thicken the sauce and added water to make the gravy/sauce.

Difficulty: Easy

Prepping time: 20 min

Cooking time: 30 min

Ingredients:

4-5 cloves of ginger, finely chopped

2 inch piece of ginger, finely chopped

1 onion, quartered

1 big capsicum, julienne

5-6 green chilies, slit

spring onions, chopped

spring onion greens, chopped for garnish

Tofu 250gm, diced

Corn flour 4-5 tbsp

2 cups water/stock

Cooking oil

red chili powder 1 tsp

black pepper powder1 tsp

salt, to taste

soy sauce 2 tbsp

For frying Tofu cubes:

1) Coat tofu with 1 tbsp corn flour, 1/2 tsp black pepper powder, salt to taste. See how to marinate tofu before frying.

2) Heat a non-stick pan and shallow fry tofu pieces until they look  like this:

Keep aside the fried tofu cubes.

For the gravy/sauce:

1) Take the same pan used to fry tofu cubes. Add some oil and toss in the whites of spring onion. Saute until translucent. 

2) Put in the finely chopped ginger-garlic. Saute until the raw smell goes.

3) Add in the quartered onions.

4) Saute until translucent.

5) Add in the julienne capsicum and slit green chilies. Saute until the capsicum is half-cooked. Keep a little crunchy.

6) Add 1/2 tsp black pepper powder and 2 tbsp soy sauce. Stir. Pour in 2 cups of water/stock.

3) Now add 2-3 tbsp corn flour mixed in equal quantity of water. Bring to boil. As the sauce/gravy thickens, add in the fried cubes of tofu.

Veg Chili Tofu Gravy is ready!

Garnish with chopped greens of spring onions.

Serve with Veg Fried Rice or noodles.

Thanks for reading! :-)