Bellam Annam

Jaggery rice — freshly cooked hot plain rice mixed while still steaming with small pieces of raw cane jaggery (bellam), ghee, and crushed cardamom, stirred until the jaggery melts completely into the rice and the whole becomes a golden, fragrant, warmly sweet preparation. A handful of freshly grated coconut and a few cashews fried in ghee are folded in. The preparation takes less than five minutes and requires almost no cooking skill, yet the quality of the jaggery — whether it is the mildly sweet pale-brown variety or the intensely caramel dark-brown variety — determines the entire flavour of the dish. Made as a quick offering to the deity on Tuesday and Friday evenings; also prepared for newly born children's first food ceremony (annaprasana) and for young children as an afternoon snack. The simplest of Telangana's sweet preparations.