It is impossible for a foreigner fully to enjoy and delight Uzbek meal. Uzbek cuisine is not only fat and nourishing, but it is also common to have a meal slowly, continuously enjoying the food. A long line of different dishes amazes those who have got used to diets. To serve up to 10 various dishes during a meal is a usual hospitality in Uzbekistan.
There are three meals a day in Uzbekistan as anywhere else, but during a meal you can enjoy a plenty of different dishes, which are very high-calorie. Main dishes are served not during a lunch, but during a dinner. Firstly, it is because of hot weather, secondly, because it takes much time (sometimes a whole day) to cook main dishes. But main reason is that a good meal with a family over a real “dastarhan” (Uzbek cuisine) can be arranged in the end of the day, when day-time problems are behind.
The breakfast in Uzbekistan is called “nonushta”, which means “to eat bread”. Actually, flat cakes, tea, milk cream and hot milk are served for breakfast. During a day you can have light food as well - salad and fruit. But there are so many dishes and they are served bit by bit, dish by dish. Vegetables and greens are usually served entirely. Watermelon and melon are mostly preferable among fruits. Any Uzbek meal commences and finishes with tea and cookies. The most favorite and traditional dish in Uzbekistan is “plov”. This is a key dish and a pride of the Uzbek cuisine. It is said that if one has never tasted “plov”, he has not even been born. The process of cooking of plov is very troublesome. It is usually cooked by men. But to cut the whole sheep and to cook “plov” in a big kettle (600-800 l) for weddings or celebrations is a matter of professionalism.
Generally, there are more than 100 types of “plov”: “postdumba palov” (plov with fatty tail), “sarimsok palov” (plov with garlic), “kavatak palov” (plov with stuffed grape leaves) as well as plov with quince. The particular detail of cooking depends on region. However the traditional receipt is as follows: lamb, rice, carrot, onion, garlic, cumin and sometimes barberry. You can taste delicious “plov” in “choyhona”. It resembles men's club. Visitors cook themselves from the products, which they bring with. A runner of “choyhona”- an owner-serves tea to the guests, keeps “choyhona” in good order and provides necessary pots and pans for cooking. “Choyhona” is a spiritual site for Uzbek people, which was also a favorite place to visit for their ancestors for centuries. It is even a call of duty for men to visit “choyhona”: this is a place where they learn news and spend their spare time.
“Plov” as well as other Uzbek national dishes is not only fat, but also large. The size of dish achieves due to rice, vegetables and home-made noodles. People, limited by the diet, can manage to eat either “plov” or another favorite dish - “lagman” (soup with noodles and meat) while Uzbek people do not choose. You will be offered “lagman” as an appetizer and “plov”, “shashlik” or “manti” as a main course. Besides, a hungry guest will be offered other national dishes like “kazi” (horse-flash roll), “chuchvara” (ravioli). “Postdumba uramasi” (fatty-tail roll) is usually served for holidays.
Most of the dishes Uzbek people cook in “tandir” (a special clay oven). It is said that real “samsa” can be cooked only in “tandir”. Usually, flat bread is baked in it. It is a pride of hostesses. They invent and find out thousand ways how to decorate flat bread. It is a tradition to bring flat bread with when you pay a visit to someone. Actually, there are so many traditions related to bread. For example, one must never put the flat bread up-side-down, as one can lose respect of a host. If one leaves home for a long time, it is customary to bite the flat bread, keep this bread till he returns and eats it.
There are also special meals for weddings and dear guests. For example, “zuraki tuhum” is an old wedding meal. 20-30 eggs are broken inside a ball-shaped container which is placed into the boiling water. The yolk accumulates in the middle and the egg-white curdles around. You get a significant egg with a weight up to 2 kg.
There are season dishes. They make salad from red reddish with sour cream, ravioli, stuffed with greens, “plov” with stuffed grape leaves in spring. Cold soup from sour milk, greens and ayran in summer. Soup from quail, “manti” stuffed with potato and pumpkin in autumn. “Plov” with fat, “shashalik” from lamb meat in winter.
Different sour milk drinks not only slake thirst, but also strengthen immunity. This is not only ordinary cow` s milk, but also sheep` s milk, goat` s milk, mare` s milk as well as camel` s milk (kumis and chala). Almost every family can make “ayran” - a drink made from sour milk and water. “Katik”, resembling sour milk, is a symbolic drink as well. In Fergana Valley a host always gives “katik” to a guest showing that his house is always wide-open.
However, the most amazing dish of the rich Uzbek cuisine is “sumalak”. To taste it outside Uzbekistan is impossible. It takes 2-3 days to get it cooked. “Sumalak” is cooked from special grains of wheat with cotton oil, flour and walnuts. Walnuts are getting cooked in nutshell. After cooking the core of nuts is added to sumalak. Sumalak resembles light-brown color kissel. It is dense like honey and a little bit sweet. It is very health-giving. `Sumalak' has been cooked for centuries before field works to strengthen immunity and to fill up vitamins. “Sumalak” is usually cooked inside a big kettle by women under the accompaniment of songs and “doyra” in the night and is distributed among the neighbors in the morning. There is a legend: before eating, think of wish and it will be fulfilled.
Uzbek holidays
Let` s arrange a place to begin with. To lay a real “dastarhan” (Uzbek table) is so complicated. You have to sit on the floor, that is why arrange a table in a loose room, where everybody feels free and easy. It is common in Europe to name the whole process of middle Asian meal as “dastarhan”. In fact, “dastarhan” is a simple cloth. It can be laid over “hantahta” (low table with a height 30-35 cm). If you do not possess such a table, you have to lay it on the floor. Place guests on the soft mattress, spread over carpet, and allow them to lean against soft pillows in the back. Relaxing atmosphere. Cutleries for Uzbek meal are not in use. If you get rid of prejudice of the western civilization, it is impossible not to admit that to eat with hands is very comfortable. Soups and liquid meals are consumed from “piala” using piece of bread. There is a very complicated procedure how to manage cutleries in Europe, and in Middle Asia there is its own etiquette. Therefore, bread never cut the bread with knife. Before the start of the meal, you must break it with hands into pieces and put in front of everybody to use them as a spoon. Uzbek flat bread is also used as a plate. The bread is thin in the middle with thick edge. Therefore it is very easy to keep meat and “plov” on it.
Plates and dishes in Uzbekistan are special and particular. Among pots and pans there are a lot of cast-iron boilers with a spherical bottom. Such a shape is very good when you stir food. Some of the Uzbek meals, for example, manti, are getting cooked in the steam. Therefore, there is “kaskan” in every Uzbek family, which can be easily replaced by usual steamer. Food is served in china and faience flat and deep plates; tea is served in “piala” and kettles of different sizes.
Everything in here is in other way. You start with tea, cookies, sweets and fruits. Therefore, dishes with fresh, dry and smoked fruits are served at the beginning. They are: sultanas, apricot, melon, watermelon as well as fried and salty nuts. Don` t forget about drinks. They can be also sweet, for example, exotic “sherbet”. Baking must not be limited only by flat bread. Offer “samsa” stuffed with meat, pumpkin and greens. After tea with pastries, guests are served vegetables, soup (shurpa, mastava), and for main course - “manti”, “shashlik”. Sometimes, all these meals are served at the same time. Of course, “plov” for such a table is a key dish of Uzbek traditional meal, but you can taste some other dishes as well. It is very common to use noodles in Uzbek cuisine. It is included into recipe of many dishes. Soup “suyuk-osh” is extremely popular (noodles with spices) as well as “lagman”. “Lagman” is a traditional dish which descends from “lyumyan”, which means “stretched pastry”.
“Lagman” is cooked for celebrations as well: weddings and birthdays. Cooking abilities of a fiancÈe on the fourth day after wedding are discovered through cooking of “lagman”.
Uzbek tea-drinking is a real ritual. Uzbek people usually drink green tea (kok choy) without sugar. The preparing of tea is much more complicated than we think. Tea leaves are put inside the hot kettle and carefully poured with boiling water. Then the kettle is placed against the hot air (for example, in the oven), and is filled up to the half. Then it is covered by the cloth for a few minutes. Then you fill the ¾ of kettle with boiling water and keep it for three minutes. After all this you fill the kettle up. In some regions (for example, in Tashkent), people prefer black tea. They drink it with pepper, honey or milk.
A host must prepare and serve tea to the guests. It is common among Uzbek people: the more guest is respected, the less tea is poured into his “piala” (cup). You show your hospitality by constant pouring of tea into his cup. Full “piala” of tea means disrespect. It means: “Drink it as fast as you can and go away”. If you would like to follow the traditions, serve tea in tiny cups. Your friends and relatives will enjoy such a joyful and unusual tea-drinking, so that everybody will pay a visit to you again.
Party in an Uzbek manner is a good idea. It is common in Uzbekistan to accept invitations for lunch or dinner and come on time. The place at a table is pointed out by the host. The farther is a place from entrance, the more is this place honorable. That` s it. Here we go. From childhood we got used to have appetizer first, main course and then dessert. But here everything is in an unusual way.
