Choorma (चूरमा) - A Little About My Rajasthan and Royal Cuisine of Rajasthan

Rājasthān (Hindi: राजस्थान, pronounced [raːdʒəsˈtʰaːn]  ( listen)) is the largest state of the Republic of India by area. It encompasses most of the area of the large, inhospitable Great Indian Desert (Thar Desert), which has an edge paralleling the Sutlej-Indus river valley along its border with Pakistan. The state borders Pakistan to the west, Gujarat to the southwest, Madhya Pradesh to the southeast, Uttar Pradeshand Haryana to the northeast and Punjab to the north. Rajasthan covers an area of 132,150 sq mi or 342,239 km². The proportion of the state's total area to the total area of the country is 10.41 per cent. (Taken from Wikipedia)


Rajasthan has always been a state of rajas and rajwadas Always very royal with all kings. Rajasthani cuisine mostly includes cooking daals (lentils) in various forms and ways. It includes a lot of spices as you all may remember the movie "Mirch Masala" of 1985 *ing Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah and many more. It is a land of various spices and thus, the cuisine is also full of spices. Yummmm... Spicy Food... My kind :)


Today, I will list one of the very first things I tried from Rajasthani Cuisine, which is one of the parts of the famous Rajasthani trio of "Daal - Baati - Choorma". In short, it is fried and grounded wheat flour mixed with ghee and sugar.


Choorma (चूरमा)

Ingredients
Wheat Flour - 4 cups
Sooji - 1/2 cup
Besan - 1/2 cup
Sugar - 4 cups (Less or more depending on how much sweet your prefer the dish to be)
Ghee (Clarified Butter) - about 2-3 cups (again you can increase it based on your health consciousness or preference)
Mixed Nuts like Kishmish (Raisins), Kaju (Cashew), Badam (Almonds) and Pista (Pistachios) per your preference


Preparation
Mix wheat flour, Sooji and besan with about 1/2 cup of ghee and water. Mix it hard and make very small flatted balls out of the dough. Heat a mix of ghee and oil (you can use only ghee here as well) and fry these balls. Once the balls cool down a bit, grind them to coarse powder in reuglar mixie.


Now, add about 1-1.5 cups of ghee and the sugar (mentioned above) along with all the nuts (leave some mixed nuts for garnishing) in the grounded powder.


Serving
Take the above prepared mixture in a serving bowl and garnish it with some mixed nuts. This is usually eaten with Panchmel Dal (I will cover this preparation in future posts) and is super yummy !!!


Some people also prefer to serve it as Choorma Laddoo (चूरमा के लड्डू), In order to do this, add little more ghee to the prepared Choorma powder and make desired shaped balls out it. It is that simple. Once done as Laddoos, these can be just eaten as any other laddoos. As, I like to eat my Choorma with Daal, I prefer just the powder.


Anyone who has never eaten it before, the recommendation is to take little amount of Choorma in a small bowl and then pour daal over it (Please do taste choorma without dal as well) and then eat it as you mix them both. 


Hope you like this Recipe and try it out. Once prepared this can be kept in refrigerator for about 2-3 weeks easily (or even more, I think I have tried 1.5 months... and it was still good), so you don't have to finish them all in one day... :)


Enjoy !!!


I will be back with another recipe again. Till then, take care,
Priya