Manipuri Eromba (Fermented Fish & Vegetable Mash)

Eromba belongs to the everyday cooking of the Meitei community of Manipur, where it is typically eaten with steamed rice and a side of greens. Its defining ingredient, ngari, is fish that has been salted, packed tightly and left to ferment for weeks or months, developing an intensely savoury, pungent character that Manipuri cooking relies on the way other regional cuisines rely on stock or fermented soybean pastes.

NNWA included eromba because fermented fish is one of the least documented ingredients in mainstream Indian food writing, despite anchoring the everyday diet of several Northeastern communities. It is a useful case study in indigenous fermentation and in how a small quantity of an intensely flavoured ingredient can define an entire dish nutritionally and culturally.

The main technique to get right is roasting the ngari before mixing it in; used raw straight from the ferment, its aroma can overwhelm the dish, while dry-roasting mellows the pungency and brings out a deeper, more rounded flavour. A common mistake is over-mashing the vegetables into a smooth paste, when eromba is traditionally left rustic and slightly chunky.

Vegetable choice varies by season and household: some versions use boiled taro leaves or wild greens instead of yongchak, and a soybean-based fermented seasoning is sometimes used as a milder substitute for ngari where fermented fish is not available. The roasted-chilli heat is also adjusted freely to taste, so the dish ranges from gently warm to quite fiery depending on who is cooking it.