Sweet Corn Soup

Dear Foodies,

Here's a bowl of soul warming soup. This dish was part of a Indo-Chinese dinner that my room mate and I had put together. My roomie, actually ex-roomie now :(, makes the best vegetable manchuria. It had been ages since she made some and we pestered her into making some for us. So we decided to make it a complete Indo-Chinese meal that night with her making the signature manchuria's & vegetable stir fry and I made this soup and vegetable fried rice. I'll come back with the recipes for all of them, and try getting a guest post in for the lip smacking manchuria's ( you can see a pic of them on my blog header)


Now coming back to the soup, we had two options in mind, a hot n sour soup or the sweet corn soup. The hot n sour soup was just plain soy sauce and since all the other dishes were already loaded with that ingredient I decided to try making the sweet corn soup. Its a extremely simple soup to make and very delicious. It gets your taste buds rolling and totally warmed up for a meal ahead. Alternately, you can add extra vegetables to it and have it with some fresh toasted bread to make it a meal in itself. I used frozen corn this time, but you can always substitute with fresh corn. It will only take a little longer to get tender.

Ingredients:

• 1 pack - frozen Sweet Corn (16 oz pack)
• 1 cup - Carrot, grated
• 1 cup - Cabbage, shredded/finely julienned
• 3 cups - Water/as per required consistency
• 2 Tbsp - Soy sauce/ as per taste
• 1 Tbsp - Vinegar/as per taste
• Salt and Pepper for seasoning (use freshly ground pepper)
  
• 1-2 Tbsp - cornstarch - Optional
  

Garnish:

• 3 nos - Green chillies (Indian chillies), chopped
• 2 Tbsp - Vinegar

Add the chopped green chillies to the vinegar and let it sit for awhile until you get the soup prepared.

• Coriander leaves

Method:

1. Heat water in a saucepan and drop the frozen corn into it and let it come to a boil. You don't have to necessarily thaw the corn, it will save you some time though.
2. Once the corn kernels get tender, turn off the heat and reserve 1/2 - 3/4 cup of corn to use as whole. After the rest of the corn cools down puree it in a blender or use a hand blender. I did not make it a smooth puree but preferred a slight grainy texture.
*Always wait till the ingredients cool down before you transfer them to a blender. When hot, the steam generated can force the lid of the blender to pop open, raining everything in it onto your kitchen and you might hurt yourself too, so always be cautious.*

3. Now transfer the pureed corn to the stove top and add the reserved corn, grated carrots and shredded cabbage to it and simmer. Also add the soy sauce and vinegar, adjusting as per your taste. The carrots and cabbage should not be cooked till tender, let them stay a little crisp from some crunch.
4. Adjust the consistency of the soup to your liking. If you want to thicken it add a spoon of corn starch mixed into cold water and allow the soup to come to a boil.
   
5. Add a little salt and pepper now for some base taste and leave the rest to be added while serving the soup.
6. Garnish with the vinegar soaked chillies and coriander leaves.

I loved this soup. Its what any dish should be, simple and delicious. The crunch from the carrots and cabbage is really nice and the whole corn kernels add to the texture. Its a nice little mouthful, especially when had with the chillies. The vinegar mellows the sharpness of the green chillies a little and they are a perfect compliment to the mild corn. Freshly ground pepper is a must in this soup, sweet corn and pepper go perfectly well together.

While replying to the comments I realized this soup could be the purrfect dish for Coffee's MBP-Going Lite. No oil, no butter vonly vegetabuls :)) :)) I had gone through a few recipes before I started making this soup(how can you be a blogger and not search in other blogs) and one of them was Shilpa's recipe and this one from Saroj's cookbook.