I, like most of you readers, do not have the slightest idea about what Ucche Mourala is. I do not know what Ucche is, nor do I know what in God’s green earth Mourala is. So readers, let’s learn together. And then at some point talk about the actual dish.

Ucche Mourala, Ucche is the veggie you call Bitter Gourd, or even sometimes Karela. The name may not have been familiar but seeing the pictures jogged up my memory. It’s a notoriously bitter vegetable (as the English name would suggest). Though its older brother, Karela, takes the crown in terms of popularity and maybe bitterness.

And I am familiar with Ucche. Just the english name through me off and the literal pronunciation is a bit different.

So Ucche is the smaller brother of Karela, both sharing bitter genes. But they do vary in taste and the flavor of bitterness. Bitterness. But if you are health conscious, or you just like hurting your taste buds, you can blend both of the ingredients to make smoothies. I won’t go into the details of the health benefits of drinking that smoothie but I’m sure there are plenty and you should try it. Even though personally I would never.

Ucche-Mourola-ingredients

Some people prefer Ucche over Karela for the more convenient size, taste and flavour of bitterness. But that’s subjective. What’s not subjective is the sheer amount of ways you can cook ucche. You can fry them, add them to curries, make bhortas and much more. The fun part is that even while frying it, there are multiple ways to. Fry them as sliced, fry them by mixing with other vegetables and probably a few different ways that I don’t know of. The same is true for curries and bhortas. You use Ucche for vegetable dishes, which I am more familiar with, cook them with prawn, make bhortas mixed with other ingredients like potato and many more. Yes, i am deliberately writing etc, many more so many times because I actually don’t know what else you can cook Ucche with. But there are tons of ways, trust me.

My personal favorite is ucche fried in thin slices and ucche with prawn. Though the fried ucche shouldn’t be too bitter (asking bitter food to be not bitter, i know right) and prawn just makes everything taste better.

Now let’s talk about the other item, Mourala. It’s a kind of fish. But I am a fish out of water (pun intended) while it comes to the kitchen. So I have no prior idea regarding the fish.

But just like before, I am also familiar with Mourala fish. I just didn’t know the English name and we pronounce it differently.

A little side note, I find it funny that the original Bangla words are so different from the English written form. If someone went to the bazaar and asked for ucche and Mourala, they’d probably end up with rat poison or something. And vice versa, if someone came to me and gave me Ucche Mourala, I’d think he’s cursing me.

Back to Mourala mach. It’s a small fish. An inch or smaller in size. In bangladesh the bigger fishes are cut down into smaller pieces for cooking. But the the size of Mourala fish won’t allow that. So there’s a very special and tedious way of preparing the fish. I don’t know the details but it requires cleaning the innards of the fish and removing the bladder. The size of the fish makes it very difficult to actually prepare and most cooks dread the preparing part much more than cooking.

Parents love to feed their children Mourala fish thinking it would improve their eyesight. I don’t know about any scientific research but it sure did not help me.

Now remember I said Ucche can be cooked with a few different items? So yeah, I never thought Ucche with fish would be a thing. Especially a fish that is multiple smaller than Ucche. But hey kitchen is where the magic happens. And Moni Dadi left the spell book for us.

So Lima Apu went to the kitchen and did witchcraft. I am intentionally calling it witchcraft because these two items together sound like dark magic. But to absolutely nobody’s surprise, the dish turned out great. Of course Moni Dadi knew what she was enchanting.

The dish had a unique taste which is honestly hard for me to describe in words. But I do recommend you try it for yourself.