Betel Oats Manchurian

Dishes with an interesting name are sure to catch your eye and you want to read about it. Same happened with me when I saw this dish here and it was not just interesting, but also tempting and very eye appealing too. Loved the thought of combining the very Indian Betel to the very Western Oats in a Chinese dish which is a Manchurian... So I can call this Indo-Western-Chinese. So what comes after A??? B .. SO this is my second dish for the month long A-Z marathon. This will be for B - International / Fusion group..

Ingredients
Oats - 1/2 cup
Betel leaves (Vethalai) - 20 to 25 (finely chopped)
Carrots - 2 (grated)
Maida - 2 table spoons
Corn starch - 2 table spoons
Kadalai Parupu / Channa Dal - 1 cup
Green Chili - 2 (finely chopped)
Ginger - 1 tea spoon (grated)
Onions - 1/2 cup (finely chopped)
Curry Leaves - 2 table spoons (finely chopped)
Salt - 1 tea spoon
Baking Soda / Cooking Soda - 1/4 tea spoon
Roasted Peanuts (or any nuts) - 1/4 cup (optional) – Coarsely powdered
Oil - to fry
For the sauce -
Oil - 2 tea spoons
Corn Flour - 2 table spoons
Ginger - 1 tea spoon (grated)
Garlic - 1 tea spoon (minced)
Tomato Sauce / Ketchup - 1/4 cup
Soy Sauce - 1 table spoon
Chili Sauce - 1 tea spoon
Jaggery / Brown Sugar / Honey - 1 tea spoon
Coriander Leaves - 1/4 cup (finely chopped)

Method
Soak the channa dal for around 2 hours. Grind it coarsely without adding much water and set aside
Powder the oats coarsely.
In a mixing bowl, mix together ground channa dal, oats, maida, corn flour, salt, baking soda, green chili, ginger, onions, chopped betel leaves, grated carrots very well. Now add the roasted nuts and try to make a ball out of the mixture. Add very little water (a tea spoon at a time) to bring it to a vadai mixture consistency). You should be able to make a balls out of it.
Please make sure that it does not get very soft and watery, then you cannot fry it. Lesser water, the better.
Now make small balls out of the mixture and deep fry in oil until golden brown and set aside on a paper towel to drain excess oil
To make the sauce, heat oil in pan and sauté ginger and garlic for a minute. Lower the heat and add tomato sauce, soy sauce, chili sauce, jaggery and mix it well. Dilute corn starch in 1/2 cup water and add it to the pan and stir continuously to avoid lumps and keep working until it is thick and shining.
Add the fried balls and slowly toss them. make sure not to over work the balls as they may break.
Garnish with coriander leaves and serve hot immediately
Please note that I have added the roasted nuts for extra crunchiness. You can omit it.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 32