Ondla Jwng Naa Jwng
April 15, 2011The Bodos are one of the largest ethnic and linguistic groups of the Brahmaputra valley in Assam. Rice is the staple food and fondly savored with a non vegetarian dish like fish or pork. The main dishes are Oma Bedor, Ondla and Narzi. This publication Fried Eye shares one of the traditional Bodo curry known as ‘Ondla Jwng Naa Jwng’ by Ruprekha Mushahary. It’s an extremely delicious and very healthy dish and is basically made of grounded rice. This curry can be cooked with fish, chicken or pork and they can have many variations.
Before we process ahead, let us be familiar with some Bodo terminologies.
Ondla: a curry cooked with ground rice.
Ingkhri: curry
Naa: fish
Jwng: with
Ingredients
1.) Fresh fish (alive if possible), 6pieces. Seen in the picture are pieces of a ‘Shoal’ fish.
Fresh Shoal fish pieces
2.) 1cup baskar bibaar, cleaned and washed. It is also known as ‘ bahek tita’ or ‘tita bahekor phool’, in Assamese. It is a tiny red flower, tastes bitter and is said to be healthy
Baskar Bibaar
3.) 1table spoon of khaari, known as ‘kol khaar’ or ‘kola khaar’ in Assamese. This is used by the people of North East in cooking wide variety of dishes. To make khaari, banana plant is cut, dried and burnt to collect the ash.
Khaari
4.) 1/2 cup rice, soaked for an hour and ground to a fine paste with water. Normally this recipe is made with rice powder. But if not an expert, the curry gets lumpy while cooking. This variation gives a smoothness to the curry.
Rice Powder
5.) 6 pods of garlic, ground coarsely. Half tsp turmeric, salt, 1 table spoon of oil, chopped green chilly and bunch of green coriander leaves to taste.
Turmeric, garlic paste, coriander, green chili
Preparation
1.) Fry the pieces of fish smeared with turmeric and salt.
2.) Heat oil in a pan and fry baskaar bibaar.
3.) Add salt, turmeric and chilly.
4.) Pour water and cook for about 5 minutes.
5.) Now pour out the rice paste into the pan stirring constantly.
6.) Cook for another 5 minutes.
7.) Put in the fried pieces of fish and cook.
8.) Add garlic paste and stir well when fish is cooked, cook for a few more minutes.
9.) Finally add khaari and chopped coriander.
Fried Fish Pieces
Ondla Ingkhri simmering
Ondla Ingkhri with fish is ready to serve
Enjoy !
🙂
wowww the curry looks delightful 😀
since I am nt a good cook i will definitely make a khichri out of it… should send this to mom.
thanks for sharing 🙂
No, not really, as the quantity of bibaar is very less, it doesn’t make the curry bitter but gives a tinge of bitterness which actually enhances the taste of the curry. The bibaar also gives a beautiful colour to the curry. Bibaar can be replaced by fresh tender Papaya flowers too, the taste will be same but the colour of the curry will be off white.
will the bibaar make th curry little blunt bitter? Coz bibaar is a bit more bitter than bitter gourd