A SELECTION OF UZBEK CUSINE

        

 

1. Lagman - This is a spicy, meaty broth filled with chunks of lamb, handspun noodles, and vegetables.

 

 

 

2. Chachvara - A soup in which small dumplings are boiled in salt water or bouillon and served with sour milk (“suzma”) and seasoned with pepper, onion, tomato paste, black pepper, and sour cream. Known also as Pelmeni a favourite throughout Central Asia and the CIS.

 

3. Plov - The national dish Plov is a mixture of rice, chunks of meat, grated carrots and onions, and sometimes raisins (with cloves of roasted garlic). Traditionally cooked in a Kazan over an open fire. Can be used to feed large numbers of people popular at Weddings and other festivities. 

        

4.  Manty - Steamed dumplings sprinkled with dill and served with sour cream. Meat, spices, or vegetables can be used as a filling.

 

        

           

5. Samsa - A triangular dough pastry that’s baked in a tandoor oven so that the bread is somehow both crunchy and super-soft. Can be filled with a variety of things, including ground lamb, herbs, or pumpkin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

6. Salat Achichuk - This dish made up of thinly sliced tomatoes and onions seasoned with spices.

 

7. Naryn - The dish is composed of hand-spun noodles and boiled jerk meat, served with minced onions and black pepper. Traditionally, it is made with horse-meat.

 

8. Shurpa - A soup made out of fatty meat (usually mutton) and fresh garden vegetables like tomato, carrot, and slices onions. There are two versions: Kaytnama (made from fresh meat) and Kovurma (made from fried meat).

9. Dimlama - A hearty stew made of meat, potatoes, onions, vegetables and sometimes fruit and  is always sprinkled with dill.

        

10. Kutabi - Flatbread, and these are deep-fried and served with either meat or vegetables inside.

           

        

11. Shaslik - Chunks of lamb, chicken, or lyulya (a mix of mutton and spices) served on steel skewers and topped with more slices of raw onion than you ever thought you’d encounter. It’s often served with Adjika- a bright red, spicy sauce made from hot red peppers.

 

  

12. Tea and Sweets- Uzbek tea comes in a wide assortment of green, black, and herbal varieties, and is served with Sweets or nuts.

Source: http://www.buzzfeed.com/dianabruk/delicious-uzbek-dishes-you-need-to-try-immediately#2agwy2f

A "Plov' is as good as a feast

PLOV, the national dish of Uzbekistan, is relished not only by the citizens of Uzbekistan but by all the peoples living in Central Asia. Fragrant, hot, ready to melt in the mouth, the rice is cooked with carrots, onions, and garlic, and served in white mountains on a huge platter with morsels of mutton or beef. Among the Uzbeks, Kara-Kalpaks, Kazakhs and Tajiks and other peoples of Central Asia, it is the favourite dish for special occasions and holidays.

Rice cultivation is believed to have come into Central Asia originally from the Indus plain. Whilst there is not enough archaeological evidence to give a precise date as to when this development happened, it is believed that the emergence of irrigated rice cultivation coincided with the emergence of technology of how to build large scale and complex irrigation networks, a phenomenon connected with the appearance in the cultivated oases of the first urban trading centres sometime during the 6th millennium B.C.

As with other regions of Antiquity with arid climates the frontiers of the earliest State structures in Central Asia largely corresponded to the limits of irrigated land. By the end of the second and the beginning of the last millennium B.C, these irrigated lands accounted for the territorial outline of many states, including Bactria which developed on the upper course of the Amu Darya and its tributaries, Dagestan on the Terek, Margiana on the Murghab, Parthia in the foothills of the Kopet Dag mountains, Sogdiana in the valley of the Zeravshan, and Khorezm in the ancient delta of the Amu-Darya. The Greek historian Herodotus (c. 484-420 BC) mentions an irrigation installation existing on the river Ak (Akes) which watered the lands on the borders of Khorezm, Hyrcania and Parthia.

Under the Persian Achaeminid dynasty (sixth-fourth centuries BC) which dominated a large part of Central Asia, the development of agriculture was stimulated by the construction of canals, where wheat, barley, millet and many other crops were grown, including both grapes and rice.

When Alexander the Great was treading the path of conquest to India around 327 BC, rice was reportedly already widely grown in Bactria.

In addition various Chinese sources report that rice-growing was widespread in Central Asia by the second century B.C. The traveller and diplomat Zhang Qian tells how in the Ferghana and Parthia that "the way of life is sedentary, agriculture is practiced, rice and wheat are sown; wine is taken from the vine'.

Cooking up Plov (Source: The Australian Newspaper)

Traditionally rice was only grown on land belonging to the wealthy and powerful. This started to change in the second half of the nineteenth century, when most of the region became part of Tsarist Russia and peasants also began to grow rice for the market, on rented land.
Rice and the dishes prepared with it were primarily the food of the richer population up until this time. However at important ceremonial occasions - weddings, funerals, and the new year festival (navruz) dishes prepared from rice have long been a fixture. Today in Uzbekistan Plov is still cooked at the home of the bride and bridgroom to be served at weddings and other important family occasions and is an important ingredient in the ritual food served at funerals.

Plov today is still a popular street food. Prepared in giant saucepans often cooked in the street, it is widely available in cafes, canteens and restaurants.

There are over forty main recipes for plov (ED: hundreds of variants) using meat, carrots, onions and other vegetables, raisins, etc. The art is proudly transmitted from generation to generation. Cooking plov requires plenty of strength and staminal. A saucepan may contain anything from 50 to 300 kilograms of food.

For each kilogram of rice the cook must add an equal quantity of meat, carrots and onions, not forgetting condiments which give plov its distinctive taste. Woe betide the cook who does not know how to boil rice so that the grains don't stick together! .... until the dish is ready for the whole family or at festivals where many hundreds of trenchermen may gather for the feast.

Source: A 'plov' is as good as a feast - national dish of Uzbekistan Boris V. Andrianov UNESCO 1984 and other Plov sites.

Note: A handful of 15,000-year-old burnt rice grains was discovered by archaeologists in 2003.

News Item : Vice Speaker of Uzbek Parliament calls on Kyrgyzstan to abandon project of building Kambarata hydropower stations

Water is the lifeblood of Uzbeekistan and particularly the western areas such as Karakalpakstan. Blocking vital flows for questionable power stations in highly vulnerable areas is as such a critical national issue. I republish a recent commentary by the Vice Speaker of Uzbek Parliament and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Central Council of the Ecological Movement of Uzbekistan Boriy Alikhanov who has called on Kyrgyzstan to abandon the controversial project of building the Kambarata hydropower stations a long abandoned Soviet scheme. His most pressing concern is that the cascade of Kambarata stations upstream from Uzbekistans populous Ferghana valley is located in a critically dangerous 9-10-point seismic zone.

Key parts of Boriy Alikhanov statement translated into english follows.

"Toktogul water reservoir with capacity of 19.5 billion cubic meters of water is the subject to increased risk, since the breakthrough of a dam can cause flooding and destruction of 50 thousand square kilometers, including the entire eastern and north-eastern part of the Fergana Valley, and the deaths of millions of people. Kambarata hydropower stations are objects that increase the overall risk of catastrophe. The consistent location of these high-pressure facilities significantly increases the risk of disasters, as a breakthrough in the cascade of Kambarata dams is very likely to lead to disaster at the Toktogul hydropower station. It becomes obvious that the construction and operation of water facilities in the seismically dangerous area of Naryn River Valley poses a threat to the appearance of a cascade effect of destruction, when a slight break in one place will cause a chain reaction with the occurrence of uncontrollable flow of water and mud weight. This represents a huge threat to the safety of downstream areas of Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan,"

He has also recalled that in accordance with international law, the requirements of the UN Convention "On Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes" (1992) and "On the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses" (1997), before implementation of planned measures, which may have significant adverse effects on other countries, a watercourse State must promptly forward a notice to the countries."This notification is accompanied by technical data and information, including environmental impact assessment in order to enable the notified States to evaluate the possible effects of planned measures. The Geneva Convention on the Impact of Hydropower Production to Other States also points out that in case a country wishes to carry out the development of electricity, which can cause serious harm to any Contracting State, the States concerned shall enter into negotiations with a view to concluding an agreement that allows for such development. The position of the Ecological Movement of Uzbekistan in this regard remains unchanged, it proposes to abandon the implementation of projects that threaten life of millions of people in the lower reaches of Transboundary Watercourses and supports options that are not related to risk of negative consequences"

Source: Central Asia News 28 June 2012

PLOV THE NATIONAL DISH OF ALL CENTRAL ASIA

Plov also called poloپلو , polao, pilau, pilav, pilaff, or pulao in its adopted languages (Turkish, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Kurdish, Kyrgyz, Marathi, Uzbek, Turkmen, Urdu, Bengali, Hindi, Pashto, Persian, Armenian etc.) and in Greek (Pilafi-Πιλαφί).

The English term pilaf is borrowed directly from Turkish, which in turn comes from (Classical) Persian پلو, Urdu pulao (پلاؤ) and Hindi pulav (पुलाव), and ultimately derives from Sanskrit pulaka (पुलाक)

The basis ingredients of Plov are rice, carrots, meat and onion cooked in a seasoned broth (zirvak). In some cases, the rice attain a brown color by being stirred with bits of burned onion, as well as a large mix of spices. Depending on the local cuisine, it may also contain a variety of other vegetables (incl. carrot, onion, potato and garlic).

Plov is the king of Central Asian cuisine, served during a wedding feast, to celebrate the arrival of honorable guests, at crowded major celebrations as well as within the family circle. No celebration be it happy or sad, can be regarded as being complete without plov.

In Uzbekistan alone there are more than fifty main varieties of plov. The recipe for plov has been handed down, from generation to generation for well over two thousand years.

Whilst day to day cooking is carried out by women, plov like shaslik is often cooked by men. Just as in Australia with our BBQ) men claim to be best at making real plov.

The process of cooking plov is complex. To make good plov it is necessary to use a large cast iron bowl with a and thick-bottomed round base callede a Kazan, and a set of sharp knives and a special metal skimmer.

Often it is cooked over a pit outside the house. The cook will have a number of assistants to help peel and chop onion and shred carrot. The best sort of carrot for plov should be of a light yellow colour, not the the carrot of Australia, North America or Europe that is always orange-red in colour.

For a good plov it is important that the rice be first steeped in water and washed thoroughly. The Kazan with an ample amount of sheep fat or vegetable oil is preheated (until white smoke appears). .

Then the process of preparing zirvak, the basis of plov, starts. First onion is fried in the boiling oil, then the pieces of chopped meat are added.

Depending on the recipe, mutton, goat's meat, beef or in some parts even horse meat is used for making plov. The meat is fried until a tender reddish crust appears.

After that the carrot is added and slightly fried. The next step is to pour water into the bowl and stew it over the fire (by this time charcoal embers).

The prepared zirvak, seasoned with salt, ground paprika or capsicum, cumin seeds is cooked until transparent and presenting a bouquet of aromas of the fried mixture of onion, meat and carrot.

And then comes the most crucial part of the plov cooking process - adding the rice.

It should be mentioned that rice as the basic product of irrigated agriculture has been cultivated in Central Asia since ancient times. And there is no better rice for Plov than that grown in Karakalpakstan. The delta of the Amu darya has a long traditon of growing quality rice. in his work "Geography", the ancient Greek historian and geographer 'Strabon' indicated that the 'Saka and Massagete' tribes, inhabiting lands to the east of the Caspian Sea, "sow a pearly grain of quality".

A layer of rice is placed on top of the meat and carrot, flattened and then covered with water. The right quantity of water is defined in a simple way: water should cover the rice at the height of the first joint of the cook's forefinger. When the water in the bowl evaporates, using a special wooden stick, the cook will puncture the rice mass in some spots and add water through these apertures.

Plov is considered to be best when the rice is crumbly and its grains are soft but don't stick to one another. The final steep is to gather the rice in the centre in the shape of a hill, then covered with a special ceramic lid, or with a big large deep plate, the fire should at this stage be as low as possible to keep the plov hot but not to burn.

The experienced plov cook identifies the readiness of plov by slightly striking the wall of the bowl with the skimmer. If the moisture has not evaporated completely, some hissing can be heard, if the dish is ready the bowl gives a clunk.

Plov is always served to the table on large (deep) traditional ceramic dishes. The rice is placed on the dish in the form of an attractive hill, and pieces of meat are put on top of it. All this is sprinkled with finely cut greens.

The recipe for plov has travelled far and wide. Taken by merchants and traveler, along the Great Silk Road in ancient times . While undergoing some modification due to local tastes and available ingredients it has become a popular dish among many eastern peoples, from Xinjiang (China) to Azerbaijan and from Khazakhstan to north India.

There are many folk parables and legends about the healing and nourishing qualities of plov. Plov has long been considered to be a healthy food. Indeed, plov is highly nourishing, and an easily digested food with a balanced ratio of carbohydrates, fats and protein.

Salads made with fresh or pickled vegetables, tomatoes, cucumbers, horseradish, radish, onion, pomegranate grains or sour grape, all supplemented with greens, coriander, parsley and dill, garlic, and basil leaves are generally always served with plov.

Salads not only enrichthe plov with vitamins but also provide better digestion of what is after all a rather fatty dish.

Further there must always be tea on the table (black tea is a favourite in Karakalpakstan but in other parts of Uzbekistan green tea is more common) and of course a pile of nan (flat unleven bread).

Karakalpakstan Cooking (Some of Central Asia's Finest Cusine)

" Shorpa in preparation"

Introduction:

Karakalpak cusine whilst not that dissimilar to other Central Asian fare is more true to tradition than some and is noted for its high quality ingredients (some really tasty produce found in the Amu Darya delta lands).

They have none of the genetically modified vitamin depleted, tasteless produce (gunk) we endure from "agribusiness" who nowadays dominate our food chain.

The main staples in Karakalpakstan are flat unleavened bread or nan, potatoes, rice and pasta and some beef / mutton or fish.

Sausage, chicken and cheese are expensive and are therefore eaten sparingly.

Muslim beliefs do not prevent the consumption of either pork (albeit it's not that common) or for that matter alcohol. Most people (men) like a nice glass of fine Uzbek red wine or a bottle or two of the famous local "Qarataw" Vodka (particularly at celebrations - lots of toasts).

Most bazaars have a good selection of vegetables and seasonal salads. Including yellow carrots, potatoes, beetroot, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergines, peppers, dill and coriander. Fruits are particularly good: especially the cherries, apricots, honey melons, water melons, grapes, and pomegranates. Other specialities include natural yogurt and honey.

The usual drinks taken during the meal is black or green tea served with sugar. In summer cold green tea also favoured.

Karakalpaks are also big on snacks and you will often find them eating dried fruit, nuts and sunflower seeds. Soft drinks, biscuits, chocolate bars, and other sweets are also common at celebrations.

The most frequently encountered dishes in Karakalpakstan include:

Plov - The common staple food for everyday meals but can be elaborated for special celebrations. It consists of chunks of fried mutton with onions, thinly shredded yellow carrot and rice steamed together in a large iron pot.

Shashlyk (Shaslik) - Also known as kebabs, are skewered chunks of mutton or pork barbecued over charcoal and served with sliced raw onions and nan.

Bes barmaq - Is boiled beef with small square cut pieces of pastry boiled in broth.

Ju'weri gu'rtik - Is a pasta dish made with ju'weri (dzhugary) wheat rather than normal wheat in small round pieces boiled in broth with beef.

Kesbas - Is made of pasta cut into slices and boiled in water with meat, carrot, onion, potato tomato and of course salt.

Samsa - Is a pastry pie stuffed with meat and onion or pumpkin, potato, cabbage, mushrooms or nuts and is baked in a tandyr (tandoor) or oven.

Mantı - after Plov, Manti is the most popular and favourite dish. It consists of large dumplings stuffed with finely chopped meat, seasoned with various spices and a large amount of onion, and then steamed over water. Can also be stuffed with pumpkin. It is usually served topped with sour cream.

Pelmeni - Stuffed pasta parcels filled with meat or vegetables.

Shorpa - Is a meat and vegetable soup cooked in a Kazan (see photo from my son’s birth celebration).

Lagman - Is a thick noodle soup with thinly-sliced fried meat, garlic and vegetables.

Some Recipes:

Samsa – To start a stiff dough is mixed, and then left for 20-30 minutes under an upturned bowl, then unrolled in plaits and cut on pieces of 10-15 grams. It should not be thicker than 2-2,5 mm. Edges more thin than the middle. Forcemeat is put in the centre, formed in dough and being baked in a high temperature. For the dough the following ingredients are required: flour - 25 g, water - 105 g, salt - 6 g; for forcemeat - mutton or beef fillet - 150 g, fat - 35 g, onion- 250 g, caraway seed- 1 g, salt and pepper.

Plov – There are two main steps in making plov. The first is called zirvak. In this step you brown the onion, yellow carrot, and meat in lots of oil in a heavy pot or a Kazan. After browning then you add water and spices and salt. Commonly used spices include caraway seeds, cumin, pepper, and red pepper. You cook the zirvak until the vegetables are cooked well.

The second step is the tricky step. This is this rice step. First you must soak the rice in salted water for 30 minutes. This is very important. After the zirvak is done, place the rice in a flat layer, and pour over hot water. Add salt and bring to boil. Keep the heat on high until all of the water evaporates. Then gather the rice not mixing the rice with the Zirvak, to the middle of the pot. Pierce holes in the rice all the way to the bottom with a spoon and lower the heat. Cover rice with a plate and then put the pot cover on. Then simmer. Cook and cover over low heat until rice is done and all the water has evaporated. Do not allow the plov to burn. When serving, carefully put the rice on the bottom of the plate. Then top with the zirvak.

Quantities used are dependent on how many people you are feeding. I have seen a Kazan which can take over 100 kg of ingredients and feed several hundred people. In general for every kilo of rice used 800gm of carrot and 80-100gm of meat and 50-70gm of onion required.

Mantı - Is prepared from dough and water, which is unrolled in layers by thickness of 4-5 mm and cut in squares of 12x12 sq cm. Meat, vegetables or greens can be used as a stuffing. Manti is cooked on steam during 35-45 minutes in special pot (called a Kas-Kan). It is served topped with sour milk or sour cream.

Pelmeni - tortellini-like pasta parcels filled with meat or vegetables It’s Ingredients are flour, eggs, water and salt. Dough is mixed up and left for 40-50 minutes for swelling. For stuffing use beef or mutton cut on slices and finely cut with onions or pass through the meat grinder, cold water, pepper, salt, thyme should be added and carefully mixed. The dough is unrolled in a layer of 1-1,5 mm thickness and cut on squares of 4x4 sq cm. On a slice of the dough stuffing should be put, corners are pinched and curtailed. When ends are connected, form a half moon with an aperture in the middle. It should be boiled in salt water or bouillon and served with "suzma" (sour milk). It can be seasoned with pepper, sliced onion and tomato, with black pepper or with sour cream.

Lagman - A stiff dough is mixed up from flour, eggs, water and salt; left to swell (enlarge) for 30-40 minutes under a napkin. Then, the dough is unrolled on layers of 1,5-2 mm thickness and diameter not less than 10-15 sm. Layers put in pile, poured with flour and cut in noodles with sharp knife. Slightly stir up noodles and boil in salt water. Before serving, special sauce, which is prepared from meat, potato, carrots, onions and tomatoes is added. These ingredients are all then fried together, adding some water as required and stewed till ready.

Sources: A number of sources including  http:www.karakalpak,com and my wife Dilbar.