When Sine Celik (25) came to Delft from Ankara five years ago, she just had to take her figures skates with her in the plane, which isn’t so strange, as Celik had been a member of the Turkish national figure skating team since age 12.
The stuffed animal was the first trophy thrown to her from the audience when she was just seven years old. Here in the Netherlands, she is always happy to go skating, and people are often surprised by her impressive figure skating abilities. Moreover, Celik can also be found on the ice as a referee, officiating youth ice hockey games at her club, the Dordrecht Lions. She is currently following a referee course, which will allow her to officiate senior league hockey games.
‘Playwrights are like men who’ve been dining in an Indian restaurant for a month. After eating curry night after night, they deny the existence of asparagus,’ is just one of funny sayings we have about the fact that Indian curries are generally very spicy. And many who have experienced Indian food in the past might agree with the concept of ‘Tongues on fire’. Yet Indian cuisine, like the country itself, is very diverse, offering a huge range of dishes unique to every region of the country. While some dishes indeed drive you to drink an entire water tank, others serve as sweet and delightful snacks.
Over the years, Indian cooking has been greatly influenced by various outside influences, yet it still hasn’t lost its originality. Gobi Manchurian – though originally a Chinese dish – is one such dish localised by Indians. It’s a dish found in almost every Indian restaurant and it’s also made quite often in Indian homes, where it’s eaten as a appetiser. And because in India we usually prefer to make it spicy, some cool orange or grape juice goes well with it.
Anybody can prepare Gobi Manchurian since it’s pretty simple. In a typical Indian family, it is ‘mom’ who makes the dish. That is why we Indians are usually proud of the saying ‘there’ s no food like food from mom’s kitchen’.
When made crunchy, it’s a snack, and when made into a curry with water and tomato sauce it can be served with rice or naan (bread). The ‘spice factor’ can be adjusted according to one’s tolerance level. The dish’s main ingredients are cauliflower (gobi) and onions, both easily available. Other ingredients include ginger paste, garlic paste, corn flour and plain flour. One can also garnish this dish with coriander leaves in the end.
Gobi Manchurian is one of the simplest Indo-Chinese dishes one can make, taking about 20 minutes to prepare, so if you’re a beginner with no idea about cooking, this is a good dish to start with, as it’s pretty hard to go wrong. To make your very own Gobi Manchurian, step by step instructions can be found on www.tudelta.nl where the article’s online version is available.
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