On BTSA Central Asia tours, we will learn about Uzbek cuisine as well as typical foods of Kyrgyzstan. We’ll eat delicious, fresh food everywhere – sometimes ordered family style by your tour leader (when the menu is in Russian!). Other times, you’ll choose your meals. Chefs regularly turn out generous platters of traditional dishes. Bread-baking in rounded ‘tandoor’ ovens will be seen in markets and restaurants. Skewers of grilled chicken or ground beef are popular and delicious, as are grilled vegetable skewers, salads, and dishes such as pilaf or plov. Made with either beef or lamb, plov is claimed as the national dish by several countries in the region. It’s served at lunchtime, and dished out from enormous cauldrons. Every cook claims a different and delicious plov recipe. Plov is traditional at weddings. The bride’s father serves a special ‘wedding plov’ to all the male guests at a special occasion held in a fancy restaurant, apart from the other wedding activities.
Vegetarians will have no trouble eating well in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, especially if you can be a bit flexible. In addition to the grilled vegetables, fresh salads such as grated carrots or beets with walnuts, or tomato and cucumber are popular and found in most restaurants. Lentil soup is ubiquitous and delicious, as is beet and cabbage borscht. Refreshing cold yogurt soup with fresh dill and parsley is a common starter in hot summer months.
Bread is divine, plentiful, and considered sacred by the people. The traditional round and flat bread, called non or lepeshka, is baked in a tandoor (round wood-fired clay oven), after which it comes out toasted and crispy. Bread of each region has its own particular method of leavening, its own baking techniques and its own inimitable taste. For instance, delicious flaky bread – patir non – typifies the Fergana Valley version. Some savory lepeshkas are prepared with onion or meat baked inside the dough.
Traditionally Uzbek dinner guests never cut bread with a knife. At the start of the meal, the youngest person breaks the bread into pieces by hand and places it back in the basket or on the table near each place setting. And they take care not to be disrespectful by setting the loaf upside down on the table.
Desserts are popular with Uzbeks; sometimes dessert consists of a variety of cookies, nuts, and wrapped chocolates. Some desserts are similar to Turkish specialties like baklava with pistachios. In Khiva, the local version of baklava is drier and stuffed with raisins and nuts, without the sugar syrup.
