A Kazakh Meal

Historically, the Kazakh people were semi-nomadic people who lived in yurts, which are portable tents that could be easily erected and taken down when the need for new pasture lands for livestock presented itself. Yurts are traditionally composed of wooden poles that make up lattice-work walls on the bottom of the yurt and extend to the crown or shangrak (the hole in the middle of the tent for the smoke to escape and light to enter). This wood frame is then covered with felt. Well, with the Russian settlement of Central Asia, these traditionally homes (and the nomadic lifestyle) have pretty much come to an end. However, there are still some yurts to be found, mostly now serving as restaurants, like the one that the Bakers, our friends and fellow Eurasia teammates, took me to in Almaty. The picture shows the family in our yurt/restaurant: (from left) David, Timothy, Rachel, and Julia.

For the meal, we at traditional Kazakh foods, much of which I really enjoyed, but some of which was a bit too wild for my tastes. Here is a sampling of the things I tried:

Shubat: This is fermented camel’s milk. As you can see in the two pictures (before and after), I can’t say that I enjoyed it too much. Dave said that I should be glad that I didn’t have kumys, or fermented mare’s milk, which is even stronger and worse-tasting!

Besbarmak: The dish comes in two basic forms, sheep (mutton) or horse meat. It basically consists of meat with long lasagna-type noodles, onion, and some spices. We actually ordered both, but the picture above is of horse meat. I actually enjoyed the taste of horse meat, as it was like a tender roast beef. It was just hard to get the picture of Black Beauty and the sound of a neighing horse out of my head as I ate!

Kaurdak: This is basically mutton mixed together with sheep innards (heart, liver, lungs, kidney, etc). I tried it, and it was OK, but I prefered the besbarmak (can you blame me?).

So there you have it! Ready to go to Kazakhstan and try out the local cusuine?