Where Tangy Means Ou Tenga
Text by Sanskrita Bharadwaj
Ripe ou tenga has an astringent flavour, and is used as a souring agent in a variety of curries. Photo by Sanskrita Bharadwaj
Sundays meant elaborate lunches at my home in Guwahati, the capital of the northeastern Indian state of Assam. My father would buy fresh green leaves, fruits, vegetables, meat and fish from the nearest bojaar or marketplace. He would come home and announce the name of each item. Later, my mother would spend a large part of her day in the kitchen, skillfully preparing a traditional meal featuring these ingredients. Among other things, I was fascinated by a large, round, greenish-yellow fruit known as the elephant apple or ou tenga in Assamese.
Although technically a fruit, most Assamese families treat the elephant apple as a vegetable. They typically add it to dal or to maasor tenga, a tangy fish curry typically made with rohu fish (a freshwater fish belonging to the carp family), indigenous vegetables and one of a number of souring agents, including tomatoes, kazi nemu (a kind of thick-skinned, oblong lemon) and thekera (a tropical fruit closely related to Garcinia indica or kokum). Since this dish doesn’t take long to prepare, it would be typically served with hot steamed rice on summer afternoons.
In Assamese households, ou tenga is used as a souring agent and often acts as a substitute for native limes and tomatoes. With its fibrous texture and tangy taste, it differs both in form and function from other sources of acidity. Tahin Ojah Sharma, a Mumbai-based media professional who hosts Helonci, a cloud kitchen specialising in Assamese meals, describes the elephant apple’s unique flavour as “a mix of sharp, slippery and an astringent sour.”
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Found in the wilderness of southeast Asia, ou tenga came to be called elephant apple because it is a popular food for wild elephants. In India, it thrives in the states of Assam, Meghalaya, Odisha and West Bengal. According to Dr Geeta Dutta, a food researcher based in Guwahati, ou tenga has been used in Assamese cuisine since “time immemorial”. Enjoyed by communities across the state, the fruit is used both when it is ripe and raw.
Ou tenga is often cooked with dal such as mati mahor dali (or urad dal), as in this case. Photo by Geeta Dutta
In the months of March and April, for instance, ou tenga is ripe. During this spring season, the fruit is rather aromatic and tastes astringent. When it is unripe, it has a more pronounced sourness. Both the ripe and unripe versions of the fruit are used in Assamese cuisine to prepare dishes such as ou tenga with mosoor dali (or masoor dal), mati mahor dali (urad dal), or even a simple ou tenga curry with potatoes. In most Assamese households, the belief is that when ou tenga is used in a dish, few other spices are required. This is in order to enjoy the fruit’s unique flavour and not mask it with competing tastes.
Dr Dutta adds that it is now consumed for its medicinal properties as well. According to this study published in the Journal of Diabetes Research, the fruit is believed to regulate blood sugar and might be beneficial in managing diabetes.
According to Dr Dutta, elephant apple trees are rarely cultivated. “Where there are elephants, elephant apple trees will also be there,” she said. She illustrated this using the example of Kaziranga National Park, a national park and World Heritage Site that is located in the state. Apart from two-thirds of the world’s population of one-horned rhinoceroses, the park also has a large population of elephants — and as a consequence, a number of elephant apple trees. Elephants have been known to play a significant role in dispersing the seeds of the tree.
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When I moved to New Delhi and Chennai to study, and then to Mumbai for work, I realised that several common elements and ingredients of northeastern regional cuisines are largely unknown in India’s metropolitan cities. Most people I spoke with would nonchalantly speculate that Chinese noodles, momos or pork with bamboo shoots were the staple foods of all the northeastern states. But the fact is that there are seven northeastern states, and each of them has its own indigenous foods. As Ojah said: “Most people tend to place food from the northeastern region under one umbrella but Assamese food in itself is so diverse.”
Although some home chefs such as Ojah and little-known food delivery joints in India’s metropolises serve authentic Assamese, Naga, Khasi, Mizo and Manipuri meals, the sparseness of dining options and the unavailability of ingredients left me with a perpetual craving for my comfort food.
To my surprise, on a rainy evening in Mumbai’s Lokhandwala area, I spotted a food delivery joint called O’ Tenga. “Was the unfamiliar elephant apple on its way to becoming ubiquitous?” I wondered. O’ Tenga is perhaps the first authentic Assamese food delivery kitchen in Mumbai. It was founded by friends Joyee Mahanta and Priyangi Borthakur, both of whom are from Assam but have been living in Mumbai for several years now. “The reason why we called it O’ Tenga was because we wanted an Assamese name,” Mahanta said. The name of the cloud kitchen is a riff on the beloved ingredient. “We wanted to have the word tenga (or tangy) in it because [the flavour] is indispensable to our meals. As kids, when we would see that our mom [had] made tenga, we would say, ‘O’ tenga’,” Mahanta chuckled. “But [thanks to] our name, people also got to know about the elephant apple.”
Ou tenga cooked with pork and Naga chillies. Photo by Geeta Dutta
Homesickness initially led them to start a pop-up kitchen in 2017. But they soon realised that pop-ups were too expensive, especially for students who couldn’t afford a full meal at Rs 1,000 (approximately $14). As a result, they decided to pivot to a delivery kitchen model. Most of her diners, Mahanta said, had no prior knowledge about the fruit. “They had questions like how [to] eat it and where [we] source it from. It’s interesting to see their expressions when they bite into a piece of the elephant apple because for them, it is completely unique,” she said.
Mahanta said she would explain to her diners that the experience of biting into a piece of elephant apple is similar to encountering a drumstick (or moringa pod) in sambar. “We all know that you are not supposed to swallow the drumsticks; you’re supposed to bite into them and suck out the juices and the pulp because it’s too fibrous. The elephant apple, too, must not be swallowed but bitten into for the flavour and the juices.”
Ojah also said that whenever she includes elephant apple on her menu, people tend to ask her about it. Some of the dishes she uses the fruit in are the classic maasor tenga and chicken or pork curry. “Some south Indian states do grow it or use it perhaps to feed elephants. I don’t know if they use it as an ingredient in their cuisine,” said Ojah. “In Bengal and Odisha, as far as I know, they make tok (a kind of sweet-salty condiment) with the elephant apple but it’s not used as commonly as it is in Assamese homes.” Both Mahanta and Ojah told me that because it’s so difficult to find elephant apples in Mumbai, they often receive it from visiting relatives or have a sackful of the fruit couriered from Assam.
Assamese expatriate Sharmin Pasha, the creator of Assamese Cuisine and Recipes, a very popular page on Facebook and Instagram, has an easier time finding the fruit in Dubai, where she is based. “In Dubai, elephant apples are available in the Bangladeshi stores and I have served it to guests from other parts of India, Pakistan, Lebanon, Kuwait and the UK,” she told me. “They were pleasantly surprised with the taste and loved the unique flavour of the fruit.”
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For many Assamese people, tenga is associated with fond memories. Ojah recalls how her mother used to add tenga while making curries with fatty fish such as borali (freshwater catfish), ari (long-whiskered catfish) and rohu because the acidity cut through the fatty mouthfeel of the dish. "Elephant apple brings a totally different flavour and an aroma [to the dishes in which it is used],” said Ojah. “I have even cooked it with chicken. It changes the texture of the gravy and [makes it] rather creamy. It’s a very versatile fruit.”
Apart from its culinary uses, ou tenga also finds other uses in Assamese homes. Pasha recalled that her grandmother would use the pulp of the elephant apple seed as a shampoo. “She claimed it prevented hair fall and it probably did, as she had beautiful hair even in her eighties,” she said. Despite its multiple uses, however, Pasha doesn’t see the fruit gaining popularity outside of Assam as it is not cultivated or available easily in markets elsewhere. On the other hand, Dr Dutta believes that given the growing love for indigenous ingredients in recent times, ou tenga can also be popularised outside the state. “If dragon fruits and avocados can become popular, then why not this unique fruit,” she said.
Our conversation about ou tenga took Pasha back to the days when life was not as rushed. She wistfully recalled a time “when natural ingredients were a way of life and simple meals were enjoyed sitting in a traditional Assamese kitchen,”. “The fruit may be sour but the memories it evokes are sweet,” she said.
