Sweet Corn Tikkis

THOSE golden beads of sweet corn are so hard to resist. The other day I picked up a couple of packets from one of many vendors doing brisk business on Ibrahim Sahib Street to make these tikkis for tea. (Tikkis for tea. How's that for an alliteration?). The easy availability of fresh sweet corn kernels nowadays has saved me a lot of misery in the kitchen. Canned or frozen were options but one usually bought whole corn and shaved the kernels off the cobs with a sharp knife. Hard work.

I find whole corn, boiled in salted water and then rubbed nicely with a halved lime dipped in a red hot chilli-salt paste most irresistible, even though it keeps one's lips burning for a while afterwards. Roasted is even better! Recently I couldn't help but admire the ingenuity of a bhuttawala (seller of roasted corn) who had fashioned a thick brush with the leaves of the cob and then wielded it with a flourish to smear the lime-chilli-salt paste on to the corn. Creativity to the core!

What you need for 20 tikkis:
1 1/2 cups sweet corn kernels
3 cups mashed potato
4 slices of bread
2 green chillis, minced
2 medium sized onions, chopped fine
1 medium sized tomato, chopped fine
1 tablespoon ginger-garlic paste
A fistful of green coriander, chopped fine
1/4 teaspoon turmeric powder
1/4 teaspoon saunf (fennel) powder
Salt to taste
Oil to fry

For the coating:
Make a thin batter (like the consistency of beaten egg) with two tablespoons of gram (chickpea) flour and 3-4 tablespoons of water.

To make the corn tikkis, first heat two tablespoons of oil in a pan and fry the onions till transparent.

Add the green chilli, ginger-garlic paste, turmeric and saunf powders and the green coriander. Fry a little, add the chopped tomato and cook on low heat till soft. Cool.

Put the corn kernels in a blender and run the blender for just about 5 to 10 seconds, till the corn is a coarse mash. Grinding it longer will give you a watery paste which will make it hard to form the tikkis. I made this mistake once. Moisten the slices of bread with a little water and crumble them. Now mix everything well together with the mashed potatoes. Check for salt and form into tikkis. Coat with the gram flour batter and shallow fry on medium heat till golden brown on either side.

PS: With (or without) a little bit of tomato sauce or mint chutney on the side, I can bet you this ain't any corny snack!