Kung Pao Cauliflower

My 117th recipe, "Kung Pao Cauliflower", an exquisite dish from the Chinese cuisine featuring my favorite cauliflower. There are so many great things I have learnt and enjoyed since starting this blog. One such thing is the social media network, "Pinterest". Pinterest is something which I had never heard of prior to starting this blog.

But once I learnt that it is a very important traffic source for many food blogs, I too jumped onto it. I am glad that I did so. With so many lovely people using it, my recipes get good visibility and importantly more traffic to my site. And even better is the numerous delicious recipes I get to see on Pinterest from different cuisines, most of which I never even knew existed. Social media has certainly made the world a small place.

This Kung Pao Cauliflower is one such recipe which I found on pinterest. While I knew that a dish by the name Kung Pao chicken exists, I never knew how it would look or taste. Thanks to Miryam, who made my life easy with a well explained recipe. When I made it today, RK absolutely loved it and rated it among one of the best foods he has ever tasted. It was sweet, saucy, salty, spicy and bowl licking good 😉 This recipe was adapted from here.

Kung Pao Cauliflower

Kung Pao Cauliflower

Revathi Palani

Kung Pao Cauliflower is a easy to make and extremely flavorful Chinese dish made with cauliflower, loaded with Asian sauce and served with noodles/rice.

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Prep Time 9 mins

Cook Time 16 mins

Total Time 25 mins

Course Main Course

Cuisine Asian, Chinese

Servings 2

Ingredients

  

For Noodles

• Regular Noodles - 100 gms (I used 3 pieces from a 12 piece packet of Inchin's Bamboo Garden's Vegan Noodles)
• Water - 2 Cups (Adjust as needed to cook the noodles)
• Salt - ½ tsp
• Sesame Oil - ½ tsp

For Sauce

• Distilled white vinegar - 1 Tbsp
• Tomato ketchup - 1 Tbsp
• Soy Sauce - 2 Tbsp
• Asian hot sauce - ½ Tbsp
• Sugar - 1 Tbsp
• Salt - ¼ tsp (adjust as needed)
• Corn starch - 1 ½ tsp
• Water - 2 Tbsp

Ingredients

• Sesame / Olive Oil - 2 Tbsp
• Cauliflower - ½ Large (Cut into small florets)
• Red bell pepper - ½ (diced)
• Green bell pepper - ½ (diced)
• Ginger - ½ inch cube (minced)
• Garlic - 3 cloves (minced)
• Spring Onion - 3 (chopped, white and green part separated)
• Cashews - 10
• Dry Red pepper flakes - ½ tsp

Instructions

 

• First let us cook the noodles. Heat required quantity of water along with ½ tsp salt. Add the noodles and cook until the noodle is fully done. Turn off the flame and drain the water completely from the noodles. Add about ½ tsp of sesame oil to the noodles and toss well until the noodles are coated. This will help the noodles from not sticking to each other.
  
   
  
   
• While the noodles is cooking, we can prepare the sauce. Add all items given under "For sauce" into a small bowl and mix well until combined. Keep aside.
  
   
• Now, chop all the required veggies and keep aside. Then heat a large pan / wok with oil in medium flame, add the cauliflower and saute for 5 mins until they are half cooked. Transfer the cauliflower to a separate plate.
  
   
  
   
• To the same pan, add the bell peppers and saute for 3 mins until their skins start to blister a little. Now, add the cauliflower back to the pan and continue to saute for a further 5 mins until the cauliflower is almost done.
  
   
  
   
• Now, add the ginger, garlic, white part of spring onion, cashews, red pepper flakes and saute for 2 more mins. Take care not to break the veggies.
  
   
• Finally, add the prepared sauce, turn the flame to high and saute for about 1 min until the sauce thickens and coats the veggies. Turn off the flame.
  
   
• Garnish with green portion of spring onion.
  
   
• Serve hot along with the noodles.

   

Notes | FAQ

- I used vegetarian noodles along with the cauliflower. You can use any other type of noodle or brown/white rice.

- I like my veggies crunchy and saucy. In case you need your veggies more soft and dry, adjust the cooking time accordingly.

- I did not have dry red chilli flakes, so could not add. But would highly recommend adding it for the extra spiciness.

- The original recipe calls for adding Rice wine vinegar. Since I did not have it in hand, I substituted it with white distilled vinegar. It still tasted good.

- Watch out while adding the salt to the sauce. Since you are already adding soy sauce as well, you can adjust the salt quantity as per your taste.

Adapted from Eat Good 4 Life