Sweet Corn soup

Ingredients:

For soup
4 tbl spoon corn starch
6 cups of cold water
1 tbl spoon of oil
3/4 teaspoon of cumin seeds (optional)
One small chopped onion
3 spring onions chopped
1” grated ginger
2 cloves of garlic finely chopped
1/2 cup of finely diced green beans
1/2 cup of finely diced carrots
2 cups of corn kernels (frozen or canned)
1/2 teaspoon of sugar
Salt to taste
1 tsp soy sauce
1 tsp of chili sauce
1 tsp of Rice vinegar

Keep some extra chopped green onions for serving

Vinegar chili for serving:
1 cup of finely diced hot chili peppers
Vinegar enough in quantity to submerge the peppers
2 teaspoon of salt


Method:

Can make the chili vinegar pickle ahead of time and keep refrigerated until use.
This is just to give a kick to the corn soup and is optional; if you don’t want it spicy can omit making this.

For corn soup:
Mix the corn starch in cold water
Heat oil in a sauce pan, add cumin seeds when oil is hot, add chopped onions, garlic and ginger and saute for 2-3 min.
Add all the vegetables, cook for another 2 min, (it is good idea to keep the veggies a little crunchy) add sugar
Add water with corn starch.
Boil the soup for about 5 min (make sure it does not become too thick) on medium heat with occasional stirring.
Add soy sauce, vinegar and chili sauce.
Add salt in the end to taste after tasting (because soy sauce and chili sauce are already salty)

Before serving garnish with some chopped onion and if guests want it spicy they can add vinegar and chili to it for extra crunch and heat.

Tips for variation:
If you like MSG can add a pinch to heated oil instead of cumin seeds, but not very healthy, so I usually omit this.
If you like this to be creamier, you can add one can of creamed corn to this soup and cut down the corn to one cup instead of two cups (I did not add creamed corn this time)
You can use any chopped veggies with corn: red peppers, celery, cabbage, mushrooms, etc.


Recipe modified by Surekha from different sources (from various cookbooks, magazines, family and friends)
Photographs by Surekha