Sour Things in an Odia Kitchen and my Mother’s Machcha Ambila

Lopamudra Mishra examines the depth of sour-sweet and sour preparations in Odia cuisine, and shares a recipe for fish ambila, a southern Odisha speciality.

The Canadian fall — canopies of amber, golden and rust coloured leaves over several stretches — always carries me to my mother's machcha ambila, a dish from southern Odisha, of fish cooked in a thin, unassuming gravy of tamarind and jaggery with a fierce tadka of pancha phutana and red chilies, bearing the hues of autumn.

Southern Odisha shares its boundaries with Andhra Pradesh, and the district of Ganjam in the south-eastern fringe has a connection with Telugu food and culture dating back to the migrant communities of Nolia fishing folks and Lengayat Dera weavers. Crossing many parallel lines and influences from border cuisines, Odia food adopted elements of Andhra cuisine in this realm, appending it with parts of its own identity. The Odia machcha ambila bearing semblance to chepala pulusu is one such rendition of adopted, rethought, and recreated dishes.

What is Ambila in an Odia Kitchen?

Ambila is a blanket term in Odia cuisine for soupy dishes that taste tangy, a flavour which is difficult to delineate like umami. It’s a bit sour with a hint of sweetness and a mild saltiness that you cannot quite tell. With the right seasoning, it lingers in your mouth and keeps you coming back for more like South Indian rasams or chaarus, and sometimes even moru curries.

Ambila is also referred as kanji although there is some ambiguity in this matter. Many assert ambila is sweet and sour while kanji is predominantly sour. Some also differentiate them based on the souring ingredients used which are plenty in our country. From citrus fruits, berries, flowers, leaves, melons to yoghourts, vinegars, and rice waters — either inherently sour (like unripe mangoes) or those that render sourness in their modified form (like dried mango) and are thus souring agents. An Odia kitchen is a microcosm of many souring agents at work. The key ones being dried mango kernels (ambula), curd, fermented rice water (torani), fresh bamboo shoots (karadi), dried bamboo shoots (hendua), different types of local and seasonal limes and oranges like kandhiya, tamarind (tentuli), tomatoes, unripe mango, and elephant apple (oou). 

Ambilas and kanjis in Odia Cuisine

Ambilas and kanjis usually rely on tamarind, torani, bamboo shoots and curd or a combination of these to turn their broths sour. The type of souring agent used varies from one region to another. For instance, western Odisha’s ambila typically has bamboo shoots, curd or tomatoes and is bereft of sweet flavours and inculcates some measure of flour (besan or rice) for a slightly thicker consistency. A coastal Odia ambila mostly has tamarind and uses sugar or jaggery for subtle sweetness. Western Odisha also has letha, a kind of ambila that uses tomatoes.

Kanjis are often named after their souring agent. Dahi kanji uses curd and torani kanji uses torani. While most kanjis are easy to prepare, a torani kanji calls for some preparation beforehand. Water drained from cooked rice is collected and stored until a sour taste is developed, diluted with some of the previous day’s rice water and some fresh rice water. A bit of freshly cooked mashed rice is added to thicken the kanji. In Ganjam, older generations like my grandmother consider a dish as kanji if it has torani and as ambila if it has tamarind, a very region-specific way of differentiation.

A vegetarian ambila is called phala ambila in Ganjam, and made with vegetables like eggplant, taro, pumpkin, and radish while non-vegetarian varieties like machcha ambila have fish. Non vegetarian kanjis have prawns, crab or sukhua (dried fish). In winters, abundance of fresh vegetables and leafy greens entails vegetable dominating kanjis like pariba kanji (pumpkin, okra, radish, drumsticks, raw papaya, eggplants, colocasia are excellent choices), khada kanji (Amaranth stems), saga kanji (seasonal greens). The combination of vegetables is crucial to the overall taste, and veteran cooks are precise in their choice of produce. In summers, amba kanji, made with raw mangoes features regularly in the Odia lunch menu.

Introducing Khatta in an Odia Thali

Another umbrella term, khatta, is a label for sour tasting preparations. A khatta celebrates an ingredient’s sourness and makes it central to a dish. Pancha phutana is the favourite seasoning for most khattas. The all-season tomatoes tamata khatta, autumn-winter elephant apple oou-khatta and starfruit karamanga khatta, and the characteristic summer raw mango amba khatta all use some amount of jaggery to balance the sourness. Cooked into thin and thick heterogenous gravies, they are in proximity to chutneys or thokkus. Amba khatta sometimes skips sweet notes and uses a tinge of mustard paste for a sharp character dawdling in the background.

There are khattas where the central ingredient is not sour like okra bhendi khatta or radish moola khatta which are soured with unripe mangoes, curd or tomatoes depending on familial, regional, and seasonal settings. In Ganjam, Telugu food inspired our moola chaaru and tamata chaaru, clear soups made with white winter radish and tomatoes respectively and soured with tamarind. Southern Odisha particularly favours tamarind like the South Indian states. Note the ‘uli’ in the Odia name for tamarind, ‘tentuli,’ not too far from the Tamil and Malayali names, ‘puli.’ Close enough is sakkara where the souring agent is tamarind again but fresh grated coconut makes its consistency somewhat like a stew. Pani kakharu (ash gourd) sakkara is famous in this category.

Too many sour preparations! Too many souring agents! In every region of Odisha, some version of ambila, kanji or khatta is a guarantee that represents the link between the diverse regional foods and intra-state cooking styles. A sour-sweet something to bind them all! My taxonomy and classification obsessed brain seeks an order to organise these culinary nuances and find an underlying thread that joins these counterparts of flavours, textures, and consistencies. But the lines shift, diffuse, and diverge at many places. They have far too many similarities to not be referred interchangeably. Nevertheless, they aren’t one thing sour, one thing soup, or one thing gravy. It’s the minute differences that provide a free range to learn, innovate and create, and enjoy the fruits of gastronomic miscellany.

The recipes for ambilas and kanjis are highly adaptable owing to every family’s modus operandi but the broth is always the fulcrum of the dish. To finish off, a tadka with two or more of these ingredients, mustard seeds or pancha phutana, garlic, curry leaves and dry red chillies is done.

Machcha Ambila, Fish & Tamarind

My parents belong to Berhampur in Ganjam and their treasured machcha ambila is a slight deviation from the usual recipes. The Purohit household, my maternal home, was teeming with school-going children in the 1950s-60s. My mother and her siblings walked a distance to school which meant lunch at 8 a.m. The staple fish and rice were a no-brainer to keep tummies full for the journey, and machcha ambila omitting elaborate chopping and grinding, easily fit the bill. Garlic and curry leaves were skipped for simplicity although curry leaves were retained in the vegetarian phala ambila.

“There isn’t much to it,” my mother says when I ask for details. But I am hungry, eager, and most importantly, pregnant, utterly craving machcha ambila. I pester for the deal breaker — exact proportions of tamarind and jaggery which needs some experience to master. “Don’t marinate the fish, and remember julienned onions are necessary for texture” — her repeated instructions. She remembers her grandmother stirring the broth in the kitchen, the heady aroma, and the sight of freshly caught rohu while chewing tooth wood early morning. A dekchi of rice inverted to gather starchy water for a batch of torani kanji. She paints the picture of dried broken red chilies dancing in hot oil until plump, a sputtering of pancha phutana crackling in haste. A light stir, the onions go next. The fish follows, borrowing some of the rusty shades. Not too long, and the tamarind-jaggery broth drowns everything. This humdrum of machcha ambila is unfaded in mother’s recollections. I have eaten it for three decades now — with fingers drenched in thinnish gravy and rice — and still can’t stop at one serving.

When autumn is gone and winter arrives in this part of the world, a pot of tamarind-turmeric water will rumble in my kitchen smelling like nostalgia, looking like the golden light on a nippy afternoon, waiting for that just needed jaggery to mingle with and a zesty seasoning to empower itself, promising comforting ambilas, both with the season's best produce and my beloved fish.

My Family Recipe of Machcha Ambila

Ingredients
4-5 pieces of freshwater fish like rohu or catla

For the broth
A ball of tamarind (size of a medium to large lime)
½ tsp turmeric
1-1 ½ tsp jaggery (will depend on the variety of jaggery)

For the gravy
1 onion (medium size)

For the tadka
1 tbsp oil (preferably one that does not have a strong flavour or aroma)
2 dry red chilies
1 tsp pancha phutana (mix of equal parts mustard, cumin, fenugreek, fennel and nigella seeds)
Salt to taste

Method
Wash and clean the fish. Keep aside.
Julienne the onion.
Soak the tamarind ball in water and extract the pulp. In a tall pot, add 2-3 cups of water and bring to boil. Add the extracted tamarind pulp and turmeric and continue boiling the water for 2-3 minutes. Add 1/2 tsp jaggery and stir to mix. Taste and add more to adjust. It should taste sour with hints of sweetness. Boil for 3-4 minutes more, take off the heat and keep aside.
In a heavy bottom skillet or wok, heat oil. Once hot, add dry red chilies, pancha phutana and onions in the order described. Stir and brown the onion slices. Add the pieces of fish and fry on one side for 2-3 minutes and then turn around to fry the other side for 2-3 minutes as well. Let the fish get a mild crisp brown colour. Add the prepared broth and then add salt to taste. Stir gently and give a light shake to the skillet or wok without disturbing the fish too much. Cover and keep aside after taking off the heat to allow the fish to absorb the flavours.
Serve with hot steamed rice.

Lopamudra Mishra is a communications professional currently based in Canada who writes a food blog, Away in the Kitchen filled with stories of her growing up and culinary experiences in different parts of India. You can follow her narratives here.

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