Spicy Corn Chaat

How can we talk about monsoon without Corn recipes ? Sweet Corn is loved by everyone - kids, adults love it, and it can be eaten in a variety of ways - grilled, smoked, pureed, roasted. The summer barbecues would be choc-a-bloc with  roasted ears of corn. 

Thankfully where I love, we get fresh corn alost through the year, barring a few months, so we make full use of fresh corn. As you can see by the Corn recipes on this blog,  we are quite the Corn-loving family. 

The torrential rains in Mumbai, and the resulting water logging made commuting by road a nightmare - honking motorists, unfinished bridges and piles of concrete lying in the roadside - all contributing to anger snarls and a continual fight for space on Mumbai's rather wide roads : an all too familiar sight in India, perhaps? 

It has been one nightmare (in the day!) to get back home after unfinished errands and all I wanted was to rest my head for a while, when I heard a tiny little voice of my little daughter asking me for some chatpata snack as she was back from school .. 

Ransacking the pantry, and then browsing through the cookbooks, I chanced upon this book of 25 Corn recipes by Mallika Badrinath (honestly , dont know when I even bought this book 🙂 ) !!

Voila, Corn it was - easy, light, no oil and no fuss too ! I dished out this super healthy and nutritious and oil free Spicy Corn Chaat to mom and kiddo at home (yes, had a few yummy bites too !) and boy ! I was a supermom all over again 🙂 Of course, kiddo had it sans the spice but with the lemon juice, but its really tangy n spicy with the 3 types of spices added into this 🙂

Ingredients :

• Sweet American Corn (I boiled the whole cob and scraped the kernels - you may use frozen too)
• Onions - 1 medium
• Tomatoes - 1 medium
• Bell pepper - ½ - (optional)
• Cucumber - ½
• Green chilli - ½
• White pepper powder - ½ tsp
• Lemon juice - 1 TBSP
• Chaat Masala - ½ TBSP
• Salt - to taste (opt)
• Coriander - chopped - for garnish

Method:

1) Boil the corn and peel it from the cob (if using whole). Else boil frozen corn with a pinch of salt and drain the water till done.

2) Prepare the chaat dressing : Mix lemon juice, salt, chaat masala well in a bowl. Add a pinch of white pepper if using.

3) Add finely diced cucumber, onions , deseeded and diced tomatoes, diced green chilly and green pepper to the boiled corn and toss well. Add the lemon juice dressing over the corn mixture.

4) Add chopped coriander and enjoy a bowl of hot corn chaat savouring the monsoon !