Corn Palak (With whole corn cobs)

Butta is my all time favorite. A trip to Juhu beach (in Mumbai) without biting on the freshly roasted corn cobs brushed with lemon, salt and red chilly is incomplete! For those who have not experienced this, you are definitely missing something! A traditional GSB recipe uses corn cobs in kandamool. For the non-GSB population - this is a type of vegetarian dish prepared only once a year during the Ganesh festival. You need 29 different vegetables to put this together. My mom makes one of the best kandamool. Its a pity being so far away from home, we have missed it for more than 7 years now!

Anyways, so just the other day, during a quick trip to Wal-Mart in their grocery section, my eyes landed on the fresh corn cobs just waiting for me to buy and all these memories came flooding by! They were really fresh and soft - so DH and I just picked up a few. Since I have been on the "Healthy Bites" bandwagon for quite some time now, I started browsing for different recipes using corn cobs and landed on Spinach and Corn recipe from Manisha (from Indian Food Rocks). The beautiful pictures and wonderful description by the author captured by attention and I decided to try this recipe. It was wonderful! DH loved it so much - he actually ate only the curry (he generally hates spinach by the way). Though my recipe is not exactly like Manisha's, it is definitely influenced by her recipe. You can check the link above to see her version of Corn palak

So here goes nothing -

Ingredients -

1 bundle Spinach leaves (picked up from a local Indian store)
2 Corn cobs (chopped into 2 inch pieces)
1 tsp Tamarind paste
3-4 Green chillies (again, from Indian store)
1 dry red chilly
2 cloves of garlic (finely chopped)
1 pinch asafoetida
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp turmeric
Oil for tempering
Salt to taste

Method -

1. Pressure cook the spinach and allow the cooker to cool. Once the cooker pops open, blend the spinach into fine paste in a blender
2. While the cooker is cooling off, in a pan, heat oil and add asafoetida and mustard seeds. Once the seeds start to splutter, add dry red chilly, chopped green chillies and garlic. Mix well till you get the fine garlicky aroma. Then add the blended spinach and mix well
3. Now add turmeric, tamarind paste and salt. Stir well
4. As this gravy is ready, drop the chopped corn cobs and stir. Cover with a lid. Keep the gas on medium and let the corn cook in the tangy spinach sauce for 10 mins. Stir intermittently to ensure all sides of the corn are dipped in the sauce
5. Serve with roti or rice