Vegan gong bao cauliflower not-chicken is one of my go-to rice bowl toppings. Sweet and savoury, backed with spicy heat, this dish is sticky and so moreish!
Now, I am pretty sure this is not authentic to the Chinese recipe, but when we have this dish in Singapore, there is always jicama. Jicama is a stout and juicy white root vegetable also known as the Mexican turnip. In Singapore, my mother calls it mang guang (芒光) which is the Teochew name for jicama. Here in the Philippines, it is called singkamas. Find out more about singkamas here.
So if it’s not authentic to have singkamas in the gong bao, then why are we doing it?! Because it tastes damn good! And the juicy crunchy vegetable adds a delightful dimension to the dish. You could say it’s the Singaporean upgrade. If you can’t get jicama where you are, then you can replace it with celery, but skip the blanching step.
This recipe is for cauliflower, but you can also do it with tofu just by pan-frying the tofu until golden on all sides. Check out the gallery images above ↑↑↑ to see the tofu version.
Gong bao is one of the Chinese dishes most adopted by the West. On the bad side, this is probably why it is often (somewhat annoyingly) spelled with Wade-Giles phonics as kung pao, but on the good side, it means we can do horrible things to the dish without being denounced. One of my favourite things to do with gong bao is to have it tossed with noodles. If you would like to do the same, just make an additional portion of the sauce for the noodles and you have vegan gong bao chicken noodles!
Ingredients
- Sauce
Instructions
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- If you are making noodles, make another batch of the sauce for the noodles! Then just toss the noodles with the sauce over low heat so the sauce reduces.