Corn Ball Pick Me Ups

I saw. I want. I made.

That's pretty much the story behind this little find here. It was one of those day when we wrapped up dinner and sat down to watch my fav channel - Food TV and my little one's fav show - Good eats by Alton Brown. He as usual had a hilarious episode while trying to use up left over corn tortillas. He called these Masa Tots.

And then he made these. And my heart stopped. Well..not really. But I just had to eat these. And it was perfect timing as superbowl sunday was just coming up and this was THE dish for me to make.

These are super easy to make. While Alton used his left over tortillas, I went and bought a pack of yellow corn tortillas from the store. Who's got time to wait for leftovers?

Tear them up or if you are OCD like me, you can cut them into long bits.

Add the cut bits to a food processor with a chop blade and just chop fine.

 

Get it to almost this stage.

Then, keep processing and add about 1/2 - 3/4 cup of just plain cold milk to bring it all together into a big mass. Don't add too much milk and make it watery. No good. Add enough - maybe in drops so that the corn mix comes together and starts forming a ball.

Alton added an egg here - but I just skipped that. These remind me of corn pakodas and we desis never use eggs for our pakodas. So this should work fine without that too. Right? You bet.

Can you see how find this has been ground up because of the milk? Now, add salt to taste for the corn mix.

Then add about 1 tsp of paprika powder or red chilli powder to the mix.

Throw in some finely grated carrots and about 1/2 onion finely chopped to the mix.

Here comes the kicker. Add about 2 jalapenos roughly chopped. Alton of course wore gloves while doing this. But we are hard wired to take this heat on our hands. Ah..nothing. Sissy matter. 

Mix all the ingredients well and make small balls. The pic you see below is actually before I added the jalapenos. I made a few of these for the kids first before I added the spicy stuff in.

 Fry the corn tots in hot oil until golden brown.

These were super soft to eat inside. I had a feeling while watching the show that it might be a hard one to bite - but was totally wrong. Loved these little balls. And they were awesome when eaten right out of the oil. Aaah..perfect!

I used up all the tortilla. There were 30 small ones and this gave me about 55 corn balls. Perfect to share. And I was good and I did share. Took it to my friends house to watch the big game together.

You could enjoy them just as is.

Or make them prettier and attractive. Poke a little toothpick and serve. The kids and the grown up kids both get a little lollipop.

Thank you Alton. You know we all love you here at our home!

Enjoy. Peace out!