What to eat Uzbekistan? culinary specialties and gastronomy

Although Uzbekistan is surrounded by desert areas and jagged mountains, the farmlands stretching along the rivers and oases of the Ferghana Valley in the east of the country offer a wide variety of food products that make up the richness of Uzbek cuisine. Rice and wheat have a central place, as do mutton and lamb, and to a lesser extent chicken and beef.

The national dish of Uzbekistan - and of most of its neighbours - is plov (also called palov or osh depending on the region and dialect), a dish based on long grain rice, cooked by absorption, whose most common recipe is generously garnished with pieces of meat (lamb or mutton), carrot sticks and onions, informally called Samarkand plov. It is usually cooked in a kazan (or deghi) over an open fire. It is garnished with chickpeas (plov noute), raisins (plovbaïram), stuffed vine leaves (plovkovatok), quince (plovchodibek), garlic (plov sarimsok piezli

Although often prepared at home for family and guests by the mistress of the house, the plov is made on special occasions by theoshpaz, or the osh chef, who cooks the national dish over an open fire, sometimes serving up to 1,000 people, on holidays or occasions such as weddings or the breaking of the Ramadan fast. There is also plov every day in the canteens of the bazaars. Large dishes are brought to the table and eaten by hand, piling rice balls against the edge of the dish. Oshi nahor

Another very popular Uzbek speciality, the chachlik is the Persian word for kebab and more precisely for the Turkish şiş kebap . Always cooked by men, they are generally made of alternating pieces of meat and fat. There is a choice of mutton, the most common, but also beef, lamb or chicken. Chachliks can also be made from mutton liver or pieces of fat, the noblest part for connoisseurs but not always digestible for western stomachs. Nevertheless, if you are offered fat, consider it an honour, and try not to refuse. Fat is more than a dish, it is a religion! The best part comes from the tail of the sheep, which in some species can reach 20 kg. The more adventurous will try the experiment, which results in an explosion of fat on the palate. It can be a little nauseating at first. Insist on pickled onions to counterbalance this effect. That's the way the shashliks

Beshbarmak is a traditional dish of the Turkish-speaking nomadic peoples of Central Asia. The term can literally be translated as "five fingers" because it is eaten with the hands. The meat of horses or sheep is boiled and then sliced into thin strips and placed on a bed of large wheat noodles. It is served with a spicy onion sauce. It is often accompanied by a chorba or sho'rva, a soup found throughout the Muslim world and in the Balkans. While some versions can be rich, containing meat, vegetables and pasta, in Uzbekistan it is a simple clear lamb broth. A complete dish, dimlama

Bread is a sacred food in Central Asia. You can find succulent bread in markets, the best known of which is lepeshka. It has an easily recognizable circular shape with its well-swollen edges sometimes decorated with motifs and its surprisingly flat centre. But each region has its own sourdough, its own cooking method and thus its own inimitable taste. For example, the Ferghana Valley is famous for the flaky bread called katlama-non, each layer of which is coated with oil or sour cream. In other regions one finds jizzali-no, which contains small pieces of sheep fat, or zogora-non, made from corn flour. Some lepeshkas are prepared with onion or meat, cooked in dough. Traditionally, Uzbek bread is never cut with a knife. At the beginning of the meal, it is torn into pieces by hand and placed on the table next to each piece of cutlery. It is often served with butter. Do not place Uzbek bread upside down, it is considered very disrespectful. The Ferghana Valley is a paradise for lovers of fruits, raw vegetables and vegetables. Cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, radishes, peppers, eggplants and a host of aromatic herbs overflow the market stalls in summer. If there's one salad worth a visit in Uzbekistan it's the Tashkent salad, made of grated white radish and shredded cooked beef, topped with mayonnaise, hard-boiled egg and fried onions before serving.

The history of the Jews in the Bukhara region has shaped a distinct cuisine, subject to the restrictions of Jewish or kashrut

Bukhara's most typical Jewish dish isoshi sabo, which is cooked over a low fire during the night and eaten hot for Shabbat lunch. Oshisabo is made with meat, rice, vegetables and fruit giving it a unique sweet and sour taste. More than a recipe, it is also a symbolic dish, just like the bakhsh or green plov, a rice dish containing beef, lamb or chicken and green herbs (coriander, parsley, dill) in abundance, which can also be served for Shabbat. Another rice dish, serkaniz

Pastry is somewhat the poor relation of Uzbek cuisine and many locals often feast on fruit - fresh in summer, dry in winter - such as apricots (Uzbekistan is the world's^second largest producer), melons, cherries, peaches, as well as the country's best grape, the kichmich variety, with succulent, very sweet and seedless berries. The melon festival, or kovum saili

Dried fruits are also succulent and even if they sometimes look a little browner than their counterparts sold in Western Europe it is because they are not full of preservatives, such as sulphur dioxide, which makes dried apricots orange for example. There is also a wide selection of nuts, almonds and peanuts that can be bought as they are or already stripped of their shells. In the bazaars, men and women are busy doing this exercise and storing mountains of nuts. The soft sesame halva is one of the few sweets in the country. It is made from sugar syrup, egg whites and sesame seeds. Solid sesame halva is made from drawn sugar to which sesame is added before being moulded on a tray and cut. Otherwise soumalak

Serving the tea is quite a ceremony in the country that should be respected to ensure the best contacts with Uzbeks. Always take or give the teapot or cups with your right hand, possibly placing the other hand on your heart. Before drinking the tea is poured and poured three times into the teapot. To drink the tea, if it is too hot, do not blow on it but suck air noisily with the liquid (this advice also applies to soup). Green tea can be drunk all day long and tea houses (tchaikhana

Otherwise another very popular drink, from the nomadic past of the Central Asian people, is koumiss. Inevitable for those venturing into the steppe or desert, it is as popular with locals as it is with tourists. The koumiss is a drink made from fermented and slightly alcoholic mare's or camel's milk. The best koumiss is that of spring, when the grass is high and green. After each milking, the mare's milk is poured into the savaa - a large sheepskin pouch that is smoked every week - and then it must be beaten for at least a quarter of an hour; the more you beat it, the better it becomes. Doctors consider the koumiss to have high healing powers, or at least excellent health benefits.Ayran

Although Islam is practiced by a majority of the population, Uzbekistan is more flexible on this point than other Muslim countries. So although consumption is not as relaxed as in the West, there are some alcoholic drinks without any problem. Since independence, alcohol has coexisted with Islam and, even if drunk men are viewed with suspicion, there is always someone to help them get home. Vodka, for example, made its appearance in Central Asia under Russian and then Soviet occupation. It is still present on banquet tables. Vodka is drunk from the same cups as tea, which makes a pretty good amount to swallow in one gulp after the traditional toast. Beware of local vodkas, many of them are adulterated and very dangerous to your health. Some would even have gone blind, but we haven't stopped production for all that! Beer is appreciated but there are not really any local brands and most breweries are in fact subsidiaries of large European groups such as pulsar