Uzbek food
Tea, Uzbek Style
All great tea cultures have their own traditions for brewing and serving tea. Uzbekistan has quite a long history of tea consumption, and as such, has specific ways of brewing and serving tea. Though Uzbekistan was part of the Soviet Union, don’t confuse Uzbek tea culture with that of Russia as they’re distinct enough. When I was growing up in Uzbekistan, I remember drinking tea just about every time we drank anything; I don’t remember drinking milk with dinner as is common here in America, and I don’t remember drinking a lot of water, though I’m sure I did. But the memories of tea, at each and every occasion, are what stick out in my...
Read MoreMastava – Uzbek soup
After our last visit to Chaihana, I’ve been wanting to make this recipe and I was lucky enough to have a recipe handy. As a matter of fact, I actually have two. One is from Lynn Visson’s book and one is from a Russian-published book. This attempt is from the Russian-published version and I don’t know how authentic it is. Anyone with such knowledge, please let me know if this is even remotely authentic. That’s the book and the page with the recipe. If you can read Russian, please take a close look at it. For those who don’t read Russian, here’s the rundown of issues with this recipe: 1. It’s not clear enough in...
Read MoreFood-related goals
I’m a big fan of goals. I love New Year’s resolutions, personal goals, career goals, reading goals, traveling goals, etc. This year, I’m adding a food goal to my list. This might sound funny to some of you, but yes, I’m adding a culinary goal to my life. You see, I have an absolutely unnatural and irrational fear of baking. I know, strange. No good reason for it. Other than perhaps the fear of the mess I’d make, but my kitchen always looks like a tornado went through it after I’m done cooking. But baking towering cakes doesn’t really appeal to me and I’ve never been a dessert person (well, until a few years...
Read MoreChaihana Continued…
Ok, as promised, now to the food…. My dad ordered Lagman. I love lagman (pronounced: lah-g-mahn, with emphasis on the last syllable). I subconsciously tried making it when I was adding my own twist on a chili recipe I read on the back of a can of beans. And I’ve made it myself quite a few times and you can check out my version. It has carrots and celery (though I don’t know how authentic the celery is and I never use it) and noodles and red bell peppers and lamb. Dad liked it. And it had scallions as a garnish. This time around, I ordered Mastava (I think that’s how that soup is called and spelled and if...
Read MoreChaihana
With my all-encompassing love of Uzbek food, I try to find every opportunity to sample it. But sometimes, I have to make these opportunities. So, a while back, the folks and I drove to the Botanical Gardens in Chicago and for lunch/dinner went to the Uzbek restaurant not too far from there. The restaurant is called Chaihana (19 West Dundee Road Buffalo Grove, IL; 847-215-5044) and is in a strip-mall next to Rogan Shoes. Don’t let the location fool you, it’s an oasis where your hunger for scrumptious food and delicious drink will be fulfilled. There were several articles written about it, and this one is probably one of the better ones. This was my...
Read MoreGrandpa’s Mashkitchiri
UPDATE: I was recently corrected. This dish is not “mashkhurda” as I previously had it named, but mashkitchiri instead. ~~~~~~~~~~ After a long but unintentional absence from the blog, I have a recipe to make up for the absence. I don’t know if this recipe is “authentic Uzbek”, but this is how my grandpa does it, so that’s how I made it. Having been making this for ages and ages, he wasn’t really clear on all the quantities and such, so I had to improvise a little and guess at times as well. Ingredients: 1.5-2 lb of lamb (diced into large-ish pieces since the meat will shrink during cooking) 1 large onion 2 medium carrots...
Read MoreShashlik (shish-kabob/ ??????) – authentic Uzbek dish
I have to admit something. I am a bit of a purist when it comes to certain things and Uzbek food happens to be one of them. See, some of my friends try to tell me that they make great kabobs and then they go into great detail telling me how they marinate it in vinegar (eek!) and that they use pork (oy!). I grit my teeth and smile and say “sounds nice”. But to me, that’s just meat on a stick. Actually, anything that deviates from the shashlik I grew up with, to me, is just meat on a stick. And I’m sure other have the same reaction to other dishes they grew up with. The recipe that follows is a little unusual, but trust me, if you make...
Read MoreMung Bean
My dad tells me that we ate this on occasion when my grandfather would make a dish featuring this bean. It took ages for me to remember what my dad was referring to. In Uzbek cooking, this bean is called “mash” and my dad was referring to a dish called “mash-kichiri”. I can’t believe I forgot about this little gem. Apparently, this bean is extremely healthy in many ways. I wasn’t able to find it at my local grocery store, but did find it in bulk at the healthy/organic food store (Outpost, for those in my neck of the woods). Also, I bet Indian food stores would have it since it’s popular in Indian cuisine and is known as dal...
Read MoreMeat filled flat-bread (lepeshka) – ???????
We made this flat bread (???????) the same day as when we made manti. See, we had some leftover dough as well as a little bit of the meat mixture. We can’t let anything so good go to waste, so we combined them together into a most delicious bread (with meat). For the ingredients and steps to create the dough and meat mixture, see the Manti recipe. The dough was rolled out and slightly stabbed with a fork. This is done so it doesn’t puff up (we’re not making puff pastry after-all). So, after stabbing the dough with the fork to make some holes, place the meat evenly throughout (see the first image). Then, roll the dough into a rope shape. Once you...
Read MoreShurpa
When I say we cooked yesterday, I mean we really cooked. In addition to Nora’s Salad and Damlyama, we also made Shurpa. Shurpa is a rich and brothy lamb soup that warms your soul. There are many variations, mainly having to do with vegetables and garbanzo beans. My dad likes garbanzo beans in shurpa and that’s how we made it back home, so that’s how we made it here too, though many people leave out the garbanzo beans. The main thing to keep in mind is that you want the broth to be clear and free of color. Take a look at the picture at the bottom of this post. That is why the vegetables are generally whole or halved. But here is our version. Nora,...
Read MoreDamlyama (Uzbek dish)
I’ve never eaten an Uzbek dish that isn’t tasty. They just don’t exist. This is also a layered dish. I guess we had a subconscious theme today with this dish and Nora’s Salad. So, here’s another finger-licking goodness and this one packs a TON of veggies. Ingredients: 1-2 lbs of lamb 2 zucchinis 2 yellow zucchinis (summer squash) 2 large onions 4 or more tomatoes 2 large carrots 2 red bell peppers 1/2 – 1 eggplant 1 head of cabbage (remove core) Spices (salt, cumin, freshly ground black pepper) Steps: 1. Cut all vegetables into rounds about 1/4 inch thick. Cut the eggplant a little thicker otherwise it gets too soggy. 2. Cut the...
Read MoreNora’s Salad
Nora and I got together and cooked again today. And boy did we cook! We made shurpa (a lamb soup), damlyama (a lamb and vegetable dish) and a new salad. Since I don’t know the name for that salad and since she introduced us to it, I’ll just call this “Nora’s Salad”. She said that she’s been making it for ages. It’s absolutely delicious. Ingredients: 2-3 eggplants (cut up like fries) 4 tomatoes thinly sliced (we used Roma tomatoes) 1 medium onion (thinly sliced in half moons and soaked in a water/vinegar solution) 1/2 cup total of dill and flat leaf (Italian) parsley finely chopped 2 garlic cloves finely minced Salt to...
Read MoreOn Tea
I have to confess, tea is my favorite beverage. I am very particular about it, maybe even snobbish, but when you grow up with good tea it’s easy to be spoiled by the high quality Indian tea. Specifically, the water has to be perfect and I’m lucky that my plain tap water is great tasting (but I still filter it). If you’re serious about tea, you know not to buy tea packets. The general tea packet (Lipton and other such brands) are really just tea dust and to me, they taste like the paper they’re wrapped in. Yuck. Why yes, I’m a bit of a tea snob. Not enough to actually know a lot, but I do know what I like. When I was in San...
Read MoreManti – an authentic Uzbek dish (?????)
I (and my family) have been craving this staple of Uzbek cooking for more than a decade, maybe even as long as 15 years. You see, this isn’t a dish you make every day or even every weekend. This is a dish for special occasions. It requires absolutely the freshest lamb, from a butcher shop, not a grocery store, and a specific steamer (??????????). Since there are no Uzbek restaurants where I live, not even a decent middle-eastern or central-asian restaurant, so we couldn’t even go out and get this dish. The dish is juicy, flavorful, scrumptious, recognizable by the “number 8″ design on top, and completely depends on fresh ingredients. It...
Read MoreLagman (Uzbek soup/sauce)
This is an easy, delicious, completely satisfying, and fairly quick soup to make. The slicing and dicing is very much worth the effort, especially considering that you can do it a day in advance. Growing up in Uzbekistan (Tashkent), we ate this frequently enough to have registered in my mind when I was a child, and this version is almost the same as the one my grandma made (and her cooking is legendary). There are many variation on Lagman, some have it really “dry” and more like a sauce, some have it more “wet”, like a soup. Our version is the more like soup one. Hope you give it a try and enjoy it. Ingredients: 1lb lamb (cut into small...
Read MoreSalad (Achichuk)
In my family, there is really only one Salad. Yes, with a capital “S”. Certainly we eat other salads, but none of them would resemble anything an American would recognize. None of our salads have lettuce. This salad is also known as “achichuk” and is a fairly popular Uzbek salad. Ingredients: 1 small onion 2-3 medium tomatoes Salt, to taste Steps: Cut the onion into thin half-moons. If you want to reduce the bite of the onion, soak it in cold, salty water for a little while (in my case, as long as it takes me to cut the tomatoes). Cut the tomatoes in half and cut out the woody stem. Cut the tomato halves into somewhat thin slices....
