অসমৰ সম্পূৰ্ণ ৰুচি
Ujoni means Upper Assam.
The name says where the food comes from. This is a kitchen that still cooks the everyday dishes of the Brahmaputra valley: the alkaline khar eaten first, potato pitika mashed with mustard oil, dal darkened with whole black lentils, greens fried simply.
Order them one by one, or as a full thali. Either way it is the plate an Assamese household would recognise.
River fish, cooked a dozen ways.
The fish section is the longest on the menu, and it should be. Borali, ari, bahu, chital, pabda, rohu, hilsa, goroi. Each one turns up in several preparations, because in Assam the fish is only half the dish. The other half is what makes it sour.
Ou tenga, the elephant apple. Tengamora and thekera. Chuka saag, the sorrel leaf. Bamboo shoot for depth, mustard seed for heat, colocasia leaf and cherry tomato for a lighter pot. The same borali tastes like a different fish depending on which one it is cooked with.
The souring agents
Tap through the ones the kitchen keeps on hand. Each one turns the same fish into a different dish.
ঔ টেঙাElephant apple. Sharp and clean, the classic partner for borali and rou.
Over the fire, and wrapped in leaf.
Khorika is meat or fish threaded onto skewers and cooked over a low fire until it takes on smoke. Patot diya is the opposite instinct: the same pork, chicken or ari fish folded into a banana leaf and steamed, so it stays soft and holds every drop of its own liquid.
Both are on the menu in weights, not portions. They are meant to be shared.
Local hen, kept apart.
The menu lists indigenous local chicken and broiler chicken as two different things, priced differently, because they are. The country hen is smaller, firmer and slower to cook, and it stands up to the black sesame, the banana flour and the bamboo shoot that would overwhelm a softer bird.
A few steps from Dighalipukhuri.
The Dighalipukhuri kitchen sits in Uzan Bazaar, next to the old tank and a block from Cotton University, and runs on delivery and takeaway. The Jayanagar Chariali outlet is the one to sit down in.
Both keep the same hours, eleven in the morning to half past ten at night, every day.
