Makara Sankranti is a major festival in Andhra Pradesh and well celebrated in Telangana too. As with all Indian festivals, celebrations of Sankranti is never complete without lip-smacking snacks and sweets served in the family homes.
While the list of delicacies prepared in different regions of the Telugu states during this festival is quite long, a few of them are popular across quite a few districts. Flour of freshly harvested rice, jaggery and sesame or til seeds are important ingredients which go into the preparation of most of these. One of the most sought after snacks prepared during the festival is ariselu, a flattened roti-shaped sweet made of soaked rice flour and jaggery which is crusted with sesame seeds and fried in ghee or oil.
Then there is sakinalu, a traditional snack of Telangana region, a concentric circular savoury made of rice flour and fried in oil. Sesame seeds and carom are also added to the dough to provide taste to the crunchy snack.
Appalu and murukulu are some other snacks for the festival, which are also made from rice flour. Nuvvula laddu, a popular sweet prepared with sesame seeds, nuts and jaggery is popular in Telangana as well as neighbouring Maharashtra.
A speciality of the East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh is pootharekulu, a sweet which resembles folded paper. The sweet is made from a special rice batter, ghee and sugar or jaggery. Other regions have their favourites too. Bandar laddu, a sweet made from besan and ghee originates from Machlipatnam while the layered madatha kaja hails from Kakinada and Tapeswaram.
One place in Hyderabad that can be visited for the entire range of Sankranti delicacies is Vellanki Foods, which is around for 30 years and has four branches in different parts of the city.
According to Vijitha Vellanki, one of the owners, ariselu, nuvvula laddu and sakinalu make for bumper sale during the festival. Apart from these they also make some special dishes like poornalu and chakra pongali only for this special period. One of their signature sweets is kajjikayulu or garijalu, a fried sweet similar to gujiya of North India. It has a crunchy top but as you bite inside the sweet filling of rawa, cashewnut and jaggery is overwhelming. Vellanki Foods also has an online portal through which you can order their Sankranti delicacies from the comfort of your home.
Sabyasachi is a food enthusiast and blogs at www.foodaholix.in