Telangana

Telangana sits on the dry Deccan plateau, and its kitchen tastes like that land: sour, hot, and built on grains that grow without much rain. Jowar (sorghum) and ragi (finger millet) rotis and sangati were the everyday bread of the countryside long before rice became the daily plate; rice arrived with the tanks and canals and is now the centre of most meals, but millets never left the villages.

Sourness comes from tamarind and from gongura, the roselle leaf that is almost a flag of Telugu food. Heat comes from dried red chilli, ground with garlic and cumin. Sesame oil is the cooking fat; groundnut oil is the modern substitute. Tempering (popu) with mustard, cumin, dried chilli and curry leaf is how almost every dal and pachadi is finished.

A weekday meal is rice or sangati with a pappu (dal), one dry vegetable curry, a pachadi (ground chutney), and buttermilk. Pickles carry a family through the year: gongura, mango, lime, made in April and May when the sun is hottest. Breakfast is pesarattu, upma, idli or dosa. Festival food is sweet and fried: sakinalu, garelu, ariselu, bobbatlu.