Here comes the emperor of Andhra food 🤴 Loved by one and all, this fiery wonder can magically transform any food it accompanies into a lip-smacking speciality. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and even snacks are enjoyed with this sovereign pickle. Come summer, households get into a frenzy of preparing pickles and odiyams. It is the time…
Author: aspringinyourstep
Kandha Vada
Kandha vada aka odiyam is a tasty side-dish for rice. Kanda or kandha is elephant foot yam (senai kizhangu in Tamil). This tuber is ground with lentils and rice and deep fried in oil as spicy vada. These are eaten with rice with a bit of ghee or oil like kura. Accompanied by some pulusu….
Dibba Rotti
It is a simple, very popular item for dinner and much favored travel food in Andhra. With a beautiful deep golden crunchy thick crust and soft interior, it is appetizing and filling. It is made as huge rotti/pancake on large mookudu or thick brass wide mouthed vessel. It is then sectioned into quarters or smaller…
Vankaya Allam kura
This curry looks quite unappealing, but tastes terrific with rice, at least according to my son. Surprisingly he loves some traditional curries like this, beerakaya karam kura etc. One may think isn’t that normally to be expected in the home environment with my penchant for cookery. Not really because, growing up he was away in…
Gummadi Pachi Odiyam
Odiyam is actually a sun-dried wafer which is deep fried in oil and eaten as a side-dish or appetizer. This pachi(raw) odiyam which is the stage before sun-drying is a very tasty, succulent (instead of the crispy dried one) accompaniment for rice. In the summer, when people prepare huge quantities of odiyam batter for drying,…
Jilledu kayalu
Most popular naivedyam offered to Lord Ganesha for his puja, especially Vinayaka chavithi (Ganesh chaturthi). These sweet dumplings look delicate and taste delicious. The outer steamed rice dough covering with a tinge of salt balances the sweetness of the inner sweet coconut to just the perfect taste. Jilledu kayalu are popular all over India by…
Challa Punukulu
This is a truly delicious evening snack from Andhra that is savoured with a strong cup of coffee elevating the holiday mood to such a supreme level. I so so so love this melt in the mouth, slightly tangy, lightly salty, gently spicy, wonderfully crunchy with a soft flesh, flavourful deep fried golden balls. This…
Fence-sitter, Sceptic or Nonpartizan?
There was a time when my sense of right and wrong and good and bad were clear. It has changed so much now that I find it difficult to even voice this reflection without putting a ‘quite’ or ‘more-or-less’ before that clear. I am not clear about anything anymore. For a while I was…
Cholera Affairs
“My heart has more rooms than a …”
The Birth pangs
Thoughts on Relativism As I struggle to single out the one item from the countless flashing ideas for my first blog post, there is the strain of conception and the pain of labor. Identifying the seed that will lead to the best genesis, developing it with utmost care and finally delivering the brainchild. Well, this…
A Spring in your Step 