Traditional recipes

Raw marinated mutton layered with part-cooked basmati rice and cooked together on dum, the best-known dish of Hyderabad.

Broken wheat, lentils and meat cooked for hours and pounded to a smooth, rich porridge; GI-tagged and eaten across Hyderabad in Ramzan.

Long green chillies in a tangy gravy of peanuts, sesame, coconut and tamarind; the classic side dish for Hyderabadi biryani.

Small brinjals cooked whole in a rich, tangy gravy of peanuts, sesame, coconut and tamarind.

Bread fried in ghee, soaked in saffron-cardamom syrup and finished with thickened milk and nuts; Hyderabad's favourite wedding dessert.

Dried apricots soaked and stewed into a glossy, sweet compote, served with cream or custard at Hyderabadi weddings.

Thin slices of marinated mutton cooked on a heated slab of stone, a speciality of old Hyderabad.

Mutton and chana dal cooked together with bottle gourd and tamarind, a sour-spiced stew served with bagara khana.

Toor dal soured with tamarind and tomato and tempered with garlic, red chillies and curry leaves; an everyday Hyderabadi dal.

Rice cooked with whole spices, fried onions and mint; the fragrant everyday rice of Hyderabad, served with dalcha or salan.

A Hyderabadi weekend breakfast of soft masoor-dal khichdi with a sour tamarind sauce (khatta) and spiced minced meat.

A smooth, tangy tomato curry tempered with garlic and curry leaves and served topped with halved boiled eggs.

A rich, mildly spiced mutton bone soup enriched with cashew and curd, served as the first course at Hyderabadi weddings.

Soft mutton and chana dal kebabs with a surprise filling of hung curd, onion and mint.

Mutton cooked tender with spices and then fried until dark and crisp at the edges, a favourite Hyderabadi side dish.

Flat, square pastries filled with spiced minced mutton and fried until crisp; a classic Hyderabadi starter.

Strong tea brewed separately and mixed with thick, sweetened milk, served in Hyderabad's Irani cafés with Osmania biscuits.

A rich milk pudding of bottle gourd and rice, thickened slowly and flavoured with cardamom and nuts; its name means 'clay of paradise'.

A savoury Telangana breakfast of coarse rice rava cooked with chana dal, onions and green chillies.

Hand-patted flatbread of sorghum flour, a staple of Telangana's villages and a healthy millet bread.

A crisp, savoury rice-flour pancake with chana dal, peanuts and sesame, patted into a pan and cooked with holes for the oil; Telangana's own tea-time snack.

Crisp spirals of rice flour, sesame and ajwain, shaped by hand and fried; Telangana's special snack for Makar Sankranti.

A raw, uncooked tamarind soup with onion, roasted chillies and a little jaggery; a cooling summer dish of Telangana eaten with rice and dal.

Rice mixed with roasted sesame powder and a light tempering, one of the saddulu (rice dishes) offered on the last day of Bathukamma.

Goat tripe and intestines, carefully cleaned and cooked in a spicy, dark masala; a prized village dish of Telangana.

Crisp half-moon pastries stuffed with roasted gram, coconut and jaggery or sugar; a Deepavali sweet of Telangana.

Fresh wheat rotis crumbled with jaggery, ghee, cardamom and nuts and pressed into balls; a festival sweet of Telangana homes.

Rice cooked with milk and jaggery in a new pot, which women carry on their heads to offer to the Mother Goddess at Bonalu.

Sweet, nourishing balls of dried mahua flowers, groundnuts and jaggery, made by the Gond and other tribal communities of the Telangana forests.

A cooling drink of jowar or ragi flour cooked in water, cooled and mixed with buttermilk, salt and onion; summer food in Telangana's villages.

Tender green tamarind pods pounded with chillies, salt and turmeric into a sharp, sour pickle that keeps for a year.