Uttarandhra · Eastern Coastal Plains
Three kitchens stacked by altitude. The fishing coast eats sea catch daily and dries what it cannot sell; the tank-irrigated plain eats rice, pappu, a pulusu and a pounded powder; and the ghats eat millet gruel, forest greens, backyard fowl and whatever the season gives. Vegetarian and non-vegetarian are not the organising distinction here — availability is.
Whole green gram soaked and ground with green chilli, ginger and a little rice, spread thin on a hot tawa and eaten with ginger chutney. It is not a dosa with green gram in it; there is no fermentation and no urad, and the batter is used the same day it is ground.
Chicken marinated with chilli, turmeric and local herbs, packed into a green bamboo tube and roasted at an angle over a fire. It began as a way of cooking without vessels on a hill slope and is now the dish visitors go to Araku for, which has made it a road-side trade in its own right.
Where to try: The roadside stalls around Araku and on the Ananthagiri ghat road.
Sea fish simmered in a tamarind gravy with onion, chilli and fenugreek, cooked without stirring so the pieces stay whole, and eaten the next day by preference because the sourness settles into the flesh.
Prawn cooked dry with onion, ginger-garlic and ground chilli until the masala clings. The Bheemili and Pudimadaka landings supply it, and the smaller estuary prawn is preferred.
Sun-dried fish soaked, then cooked in tamarind with drumstick or brinjal. A monsoon dish, made when the boats are off the water, and unmistakable from two houses away.
Finger millet as a cold soured gruel in the morning and as a stiff ball with a thin curry at midday. The ghat staple, and the reason the hill kitchen needs almost no oil.
Roselle leaf cooked into pigeon-pea dal. The leaf does the souring, so no tamarind goes in. It is eaten here, but without the near-devotional status it has in the deltas.
Raw mango cooked with pigeon pea, tempered with mustard, curry leaf and dried chilli, and finished with a little jaggery — the small sweet correction that marks this register out from Guntur's.
Roasted pulse or sesame pounded with dried chilli and garlic into a coarse powder, eaten with rice and a spoon of hot oil. It is a whole meal in a dry season and it keeps for weeks without a container that seals.
Wild leafy greens gathered by the season, and tender bamboo shoot sliced, boiled off and cooked or soured into a pickle. What is on the plate above the scarp is set by the week of the year.
Goat cooked in a thin tamarind-and-chilli gravy with whole spice, less oily and less fiery than the Rayalaseema or Guntur versions, and usually eaten with rice rather than with a bread.
Cashew from the Srikakulam laterite belt, roasted and sold by grade. Palasa and Kasibugga process a very large share of the region's crop, much of it brought in from Odisha and West Africa as well as grown locally.
Cane boiled down to jaggery at Anakapalli, which runs one of the largest jaggery markets in the country. It is eaten plain with rice and ghee, and it is the reason the local kitchen sweetens its sour dishes.
A jaggery-and-gram filling either sealed in a thin wheat disc and griddled, or wrapped in a green-gram batter and deep-fried. The two standing festival sweets, made for Ugadi and for Sankranti.
Steamed rice-flour dumplings with coconut and jaggery, cooked inside a fresh turmeric leaf for Vinayaka Chavithi. The leaf is the flavouring and the season is set by it.
Shade-grown arabica from the ghat villages, registered as a geographical indication in 2019 as Araku Valley Arabica. The distinctive thing is not the cup but the ownership structure — the coffee is grown on small Adivasi holdings and processed through cooperatives, which is unusual for a specialty origin anywhere.
Staples
Sweets
Street food
Drinks
The food of Uttarandhra — signature dishes, staples, sweets, street food and where to eat them. (16)