Cham-Chams

Cham-Cham is a delicious Bengali sweet. I never knew of these untill recently. When RCI-Bengal was announced i decided to make these.

Ingredients:

Half Gallon Milk

3 tbsp lemon juice

Pinch of food colour
1 1/2 cups of sugar

4 cups of water

1 tsp of rose water

Whipped Cream and dried nuts for garninshing (optional)

Method:

• Bring milk to boil over medium heat. Stir often to prevent burning. When milk starts to boil add the lemon juice and mix well. Now the milk will start to curdle and the curd will seperate from the milk. At this point, turn off the heat and allow the milk to sit for 10 minutes.
• Strain it in a cheesecloth and wash it under running water to remove all the lemon juice. Hang the cheese cloth in the sink or place it in the colander for one hour so that all the water drains off.
• When all the water is drained off place the paneer in a bowl, add the food colour and knead it untill the paneer becomes very smooth. The paneer should be very smooth for making cham-chams. (If the paneer is very dry you can add few drops of water and if there is more water you can add little bit of all purpose flour. I added pink food colour to half of the mixture.)
• Divide the dough into small equal sized balls and roll them between your palms such that there are no cracks on them. Now roll the balls into an oval and flatten them a bit.
• Mix the water and sugar in a pan on medium heat and bring the mixture to boil. The pan should be large enough to hold all the cham-chams as they will almost double in size.
• When the sugar syrup boils add all the paneer rolls to the syrup and cover the pan. Cook for 10 minutes on medium to high heat. Now turn off the heat and wait for 5 minutes before opening the lid. Allow the cham-chams to cool in the pan. The cham-chams will be very delicate now.
• When cooled, add the rose water and refrigerate it atleast for 6-8 hours. It tastes better if you refrigerate it for a day.
• When they are chilled fully, remove them from the sugar syrup. You can garnish these with whipped cream ,dried nuts or cherries. I garnished mine with a few almond slices.

I am sending these to RCI-Bengal hosted by Sandeepa of Bong Mom's Cookbook. I am also sending the above picture ( 2nd one) to Click-Metal hosted by Jai & Bee of Jugalbandi.