A traditional recipe from the beautiful valleys of Lahaul and Spiti. It's a traditional ’thukpa’. The cuisine from the valley is quite similar to Tibetan style recipes. Unroasted barley is beaten in a pestle and mortar in traditional recipe. They are rolled into small balls. These balls are frozen and stored for use during long winter months. Small quantities of this chhan are added to thukpa and mostly cooked with black peas or non-veg. Here is the traditional recipe barley soup cooked with shranma (indigenous peas) and nag-shran (indigenous black peas) and apricot kernel residue for flavouring.
A local cuisine that is simple, nutritious and flavourful.
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp dried cheese
- 1 tbsp black peas
- 1 tbsp turtle bean
- 1 tbsp crushed apricot seeds
- 1 tbsp crushed walnuts
- ½ cup unroasted barley, pounded
- Salt as per taste
- Water
- Ghee
Method
- Soak peas and cheese overnight
- Cook barley for 10 mins and boil
- Add crushed apricot seeds, walnuts, salt and ghee.
- Serve hot!
You can use normal dried peas instead but the real flavour comes from the use of indigenous peas from the valley.