Uzbekistan on a plate

With an interesting mélange of flavours and cooking techniques, the cuisine of Uzbekistan is one that’s paradoxically both unique and comfortingly familiar, discovers Raul Dias as he partakes in its bounty

As a traveller, I’ve always believed in the undeniable truism that, to know a country and its people better, one must visit a local market. Better still on one’s very first day in that country. These are places brimming with multi-sensorial stimulation that serve as a portent for things to come in your days ahead...

Just as one’s eyes come to grips with the riot of colours seen in the spice section, the olfactory faculty is challenged by unusual aromas that tickle the nose. Then suddenly, the taste buds enter the fray. This, as you are handed a sampling of something deliciously alien by a kindly stall owner.

This is exactly how my very first 20 minutes are spent on my very first day in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. This elusive, exotically uncharted former USSR republic of Central Asia, has always held tremendous sway for the adventurous traveller in me as a destination with a difference. Mainly, because it is so way off the beaten track that not many have even heard of it, leave aside travelled to it.

Oven fresh

Fresh after dropping off my luggage at the hotel, I find myself at the mammoth Chorsu Bazaar where it is rumoured that you can get everything from a pin to an elephant. The main domed market is an enclosed space that is divided into various sections selling meat, pickles, fruits, vegetables, and dairy along with the salty sheep’s milk cheese called kurt that the locals love. Here, I shuffle my way past a multitude of vendors, as I head towards the source of the yummy aroma wafting through the nonvoy khona or bakery section. I quickly pick up two plump, lamb meat-stuffed somsas that are dead ringers for our Indian samosas. Only here, the breading is super flaky, made from pea flour called sorgo and utterly divine!

Later that day, I stopped by the city’s open-air Chigatay Darvoza Non Bazaar for some Tashkent lochira non. This unique mould-formed non is baked from shortcrust pastry made from milk, butter, and sugar. It has a perimeter that is marked with spoke-like patterns that come from a tool called a bosma, which in days past used to be made out of repurposed spokes from a bicycle wheel, I’m told by a baker.

Plov, the de facto national dish

A few days later, I find myself in the historic city of Bukhara, having gotten here from Tashkent via the superfast Afrosiyob bullet train. I’m at the very popular Magistral Plov Center a half-hour ride by taxi out of the main city. I’m here for my first sampling of a version of a dish that’s known multifariously all over Asia as palov, polov, polo, polu, pilaf and of course our very own pulao. Here in Uzbekistan, the rice and meat preparation goes by the name of plov and is considered the de facto national dish.

The plov making process is an extremely nuanced one as I can see from the other side of the centre’s open kitchen. Medium grain rice is first fried in the nutty-tasting rapeseed oil along with onions, garlic, chunks of fatty lamb, golden sultanas and a fistful of sugared yellow carrot juliennes. All this is then stewed along with a generous splash of cumin powder-enhanced lamb stock for hours in a dough-sealed, humongous cauldron called a kazan. A few hours later, the head plov maker called an oshpaz breaks the seal to reveal the kazan’s fragrant contents that he then goes on to aerate by separating the meat and rice grains with a large spatula.

Traditionally served on a blue and white ikat patterned platter called a lagan from the country’s pottery capital of Fergana, the plov is then finished off with a flourish of boiled chickpeas, quail eggs and a particular type of horsemeat sausage called kazi that is delicious and surprisingly subtle, sans any funky flavour that I’d been expecting. Once again, I’m reminded of home as I wash down my generous portion of plov with a salty lassi-like yoghurt drink called ayran.

Grape expectations

I have to admit, that my final pit stop in the city of Samarkand surprises me the most of all the places I have visited thus far in Uzbekistan. Not least of all for its stunning architecture and monuments like the Ulugh Beg Madrasa, the Sherdor Madrassah and the Tilla Kari Madrasa that one can find in the Registan complex located in the heart of the city.

My surprise has got to do with a libation I’d never in a million years associate with a primarily Muslim country like Uzbekistan. I’m talking about wine. Housed in Samarkand’s historic Jewish quarter, the Khovrenko Winery that’s been in continuous business since 1868 is where I get a crash course in Uzbekistan’s wines. I sign up for the one-hour wine tour that sets me back by 50,000 Som (around Rs 1,000). Our guide Abdulaziz Yo’ldoshev tells us that it was only in 1927 that true fame came to the winery when Russian scientist, wine-maker and chemist Michael Khovrenko joined Khovrenko, eventually buying it off from the earlier owners. Apparently, it was he who designed the technical methods for producing such vintage wines as Gulyakandoz, Shirin and Liquor Kaberne — three of Uzbekistan’s most successful ones. We are then led to the winery’s 100-year-old cellar called the ‘library’. Here, narrow passageways run among the shelves, on which bottles of wine covered with a thick coat of dust are arranged. It is here that we enjoy our (included) sampling of everything from the 10-year-aged, amber-hued Filatov cognac to the cloyingly sweet, but yummy USSR-style Kargof dessert wine that’s a blend of Georgian and Cabernet grape varietals, all grown on Uzbek soil. A perfect end to the serendipitous discovery of the exotic, yet deliciously familiar flavours of Uzbekistan!