During my years in India, I often encountered a question that I could not answer until much later. The question goes : "Can you teach me how to make Gobi Manchurian, the CHINESE FOOD ?"
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Oh yes, you heard it right, a Chinese dish that no Chinese ever heard forget eating back home in China. It is a dish that surely show up on the menu of any Chinese restaurant in India. A dish took me a long time to figure out what it is. Longer time to explain to my Indian friends that Gobi Manchurian is NOT a Chinese dish, and Manchu is NOT a state in China, it refers to the tri-states area up north in China in ancient time, the term Manchu is no longer in use geographically nowadays, Manchurian now refers to one ethnic group in China, and we find no trace of this dish in the Manchu's recipes...."
I could only imagine now that this delicious Indian-Chinese dish was created long back by some well-wished Chinese chef try to make a dish that suits the local taste buds with some local ingredients. It probably is a derivation from the the famous sweet and sour pork dish name guobaorou "锅包肉” from the northern part of China, Just a vegetarian version, with quite a number of modifications!