“We have eaten meat on a stick ever since the caveman killed his first chicken. It was a simple logic. Bones make great handles.” So said chef Sanjay Thumma, aka Vahchef, in a 2008 YouTube video posted around the time he sold his Chicago-area minichain Sizzle India, moved back to India, and went viral among the Indo-expat diaspora. In the video—which at press time was clocking just over 1.4 million views—Thumma demonstrates increasingly Fieri-esque variations on Hakka-style lollipop chicken wings—chubby frenched drumettes first marinated in a masala yogurt, then battered and fried hard in a turmeric-and-chile-stained fry suit. They’re a product of the particular style of Indo-Chinese culinary cross-pollination that spread after ethnic-Chinese Hakka settled around Kolkata and native Indians started adapting the newcomers’ food to their own tastes.
Manchurian sauce, for example, bears some resemblance to the inky glossy sauces (glauces?) you might encounter at Great Beijing or Great Sea, not black bean, but soy sauce-dominated, with a hint of chile heat and not a lot of sweetness. It’s a silky nightgown for ruddy lamb meatballs or lightly fried cauliflower, though you have to attack these early before their crispiness degrades into mush. The profile isn’t dissimilar from the black- pepper gravy that blankets that tofu with fins, fried tilapia fillets, or lighter, almost fluffy chicken meatballs.
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