Journey Around the 5 Stans: Food for Thought

Ken Powell a seasoned globe-trotter and experienced photographer (powellphotography.ca), blogs (powellponderings.com) about his journey with Adventures Abroad’s 21 Day Five Stans Tour, which covers Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. His insights, images, and expertise offer a wonderful glimpse into this extraordinary tour.

We ate well, and we didn’t. By that I mean I wouldn’t cite the cuisine as a reason for visiting these countries. First of all, they are landlocked so seafood was rare. There were some delights too. I enjoyed the soups, for example, shorpa, a meat and vegetable soup was excellent. Plov is one of their staples. It consists of chunks of mutton, shredded yellow turnip and rice fried in a large wok. Ka’urma is mutton deep fried in its own fat and churban churpa is mutton fat dissolved in green tea. Lagmon – thick noodles, fried or served in a variety of soups – is popular.

Samsas are often baked in the tandoor (a special clay oven). The most common filling for a traditional samsa is a mixture of minced lamb and onions, but also chicken, minced beef and cheese.

One theme emerged: we were always presented with more food than we could possibly eat. On one plate alone at lunch in Tashkent, we had Lula kebab, stuffed pepper, dolmas, cabbage roll, and manti (dumpling). But that was just a start as more kept coming.

The cuisine does not generally use spices or seasonings; large amounts of cottonseed oil are often used for flavour. While I ate well, I didn’t eat a lot as I found it filling.

Green tea is the primary drink, consumed at all hours. The juices, in cartons, are excellent. The use of milk and sour milk products is widespread and explainable because kumys (fermented mare’s milk), shubat (camel’s milk) and airan (sour milk beverage) are easy to store in conditions of nomad life.

Vodka is the most popular alcoholic beverage, due to its low cost (it can be cheaper than bottled water at times), followed by beer (local, which was fine, as well as imported), and wine. Brendan and I, along with our leader Jonathan, got into the habit of finishing off the day with a jigger or two of the vodka. Early on we tested the range of wines; many a glass was left un-drunk although we found some welcome surprises.

Adventures Abroad tried to vary our choice. We had an Italian meal in Almaty and a Lebanese meal in Dushanbe. The Hilton Hotel in Dushanbe produced a spectacular Thai soup and a prawn main. One evening in Samarkand we spent at a private home which served a very “local” meal (salads, meat and pumpkin samosas, and Samarkand Plov).

On our first night in Samarkand, we were entertained by the presentation of our dinner. It started off in a regular fashion. We were all seated at one long table. I ordered a beer and nibbled at some bread. Then out from the kitchen came four waiters carrying a very long board (at least 14 or 15 feet long) upon which was placed an also very long continuous chunk of ground meat, sort of sausage shaped, all on one long skewer. It was called shashlik.

The waiters and waitress were singing, laughing, clapping and dancing as it was brought over our heads and placed in front of us on the table. We also got into the singing and clapping mood. On the table were placed lit sparklers.

Dinner and a Show. Video by Brendan Powell.

The meat was lamb and quite flavourful and juicy with lots of onions. It was kind of like a shish kebab. (Apparently, the word shashlik entered English from the Russian shashlyk, of Turkic origin. In Turkic languages, the word shish means skewer, and shishlik is literally translated as “skewerable”.)

For those people who like to snack, the following is a collection of some of the local chip flavours that you can get on the Five Stans tour.