Meat, meat and meat! You don’t like meat??! What about chicken?! Got warned when I was in China – get ready for central Asian meaty food until you reach Georgia!
Food in central Asia is very meaty! More meat, better is it. All countries believe their shashlyk (meat skewers) is the best and claim it as their national dish (it is not from ___Stan country, but ours!). All Stans claim plov (rice with meat), lagman (thick noodles with meat and some veggies), beshbarmak (five fingers food – horse meat and noodles), manty (dumplings with meat and potato) as theirs. When you are lucky you can find samsa with chicken, not meat!
Another dimension opens when you visit a local market – yes, they have fruits and veggies and hips of dairy products – kaymak, butter, cream, cheese, kurut, kefir, ayran, yoghurt.
Is there really no kumis in Europe? How you people can live without it? Kumis is a national and super popular drink made of fermented mare milk. Locals invite for it all the time. You don’t like it? We have a problem!!! Well, they will just laugh and pure another cup of it. Drink, brother drink.
Kurut is another thing – small dried or half dried cheese balls. Locals love them and they are for sale everywhere along the road and yurts. They can be pretty good or a perfect thing to break your teeth.
Restaurants in Kyrgyzstan – more meat, better 🙂 We went to really nice one and all main dishes were meat ONLY. Meat, meat with fired onion, meat with fresh onion, meat with some additional fat, meat skewers.
Milk intolerant? No problem – most of dairy products are from fermented milk and even porridge is cooked in water. 0 issues so far and zero food poisonings 🙂 Or maybe I just accumulated enough lactaze enzyme and all SE Asian microorganisms in my stomach that I can survive pretty much everywhere!
