A Quick Note About Food

April 8, 2007

For those of you who worry about whether Peace Corps volunteers are starving to death or suffering from malnutrition because we only eat meat potatoes, I hope that this post will set your minds at ease. While the Kazak diet is primarily meat and potatoes, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and carrots, are also important fixtures in any Kazak meal. Furthermore, Kazak food is not the only thing we eat. Here in Kyzylorda, we also have the option to eat Uzbek, Korean, or Russian food too. To be sure, the Uzbek, Korean, and Russian cuisines have been Kazakized to some extent, but they still maintain most of their unique qualities, which is good because as they say, “variety is the spice of life.”

My two favorite Kazak dishes are definitely besparmak and Monte. besparmak, or “five fingers”, is a dish made of meat, potatoes, and onions, spread out on a large plate of wide, flat noodles. It is called “five fingers” because you eat it with your fingers, with everyone reaching out and grabbing pieces of meat, noodles, and onions from the shared plate. To wash this delicious and healthy meal down, you drink a concoction called sorpa, which is basically just piping hot meat broth. I know that this meal does not sound very healthy, but I swear that you feel 100 percent better than you did after eating it. Also, if you are thinking of ever coming to Kazakhstan, you are going to need to like it, because it is the national dish and at any party or “konnak” there is a fifty/fifty chance that besparmak will be served. Monte is my other favorite Kazak dish, probably because my host mom makes the best monte on the planet. Monte are basically steamed dumplings, but they are folded up differently and are usually larger. The monte are usually filled with meat and onions, and you eat them by the dozen with either ketchup or mayonnaise, delicious.

Besides besparmak and monte, the next most popular dish in Kazakhstan, at least here in the south is definitely palay, also known as plov. It is actually an Uzbek dish and is particularly popular here in the south because we are so close to the border. I do find it interesting and a little confusing that Kazak people will make derogatory remarks about Uzbeks while downing their food by the pound, but I guess that is one of those mysteries that has not yet revealed itself to me. palay is made of rice, carrots, and of course meat. Like besparmak, palay is eaten off of one collective plate but this time at least they give everyone large spoons. If I have one bad thing to say about palay it is that it is often kind of bland, as is the case with a lot of Kazak/Uzbek dishes, but with a bit of hot chili sauce mixed in, palay goes from ho-hum to awesome.

As one would expect after over 70 years of Soviet occupation, Russian food is also plentiful and popular in Kazakhstan, even in the south. My two favorite Russian foods are borscht and belashsee. I imagine everyone knows what Borscht is, a sort of beet stew with cabbage and potatoes, but there may be a few people who have never heard of nor tasted the belashee. Belashees are kind of like meat donuts. They are simply dough wrapped around a small roll of ground meat that is then dipped in oil and fried. A heart attack waiting to happen I know, but when eaten with a bowl of borscht they are part of a perfect lunch. Anyways, I usually work out in the afternoons, so I do not think I am too much at risk.

Finally, a cultural cuisine that is surprisingly popular here in Kyzylorda is Korean food, particularly the dish Kukci. It is a soup made up of noodles, diced meat, carrots, cabbage, tomatoes, and cucumbers, all simmering in a soy sauce broth. It quickly became one of our favorite dishes because it was the one way we could get fresh vegetables in our diet during the winter. It is also one of the spicer and saltier meals available. I was definitely was not expecting to get such a steady diet of Korean food in Kazakhstan, especially in Kyzylorda, but apparently area has a rather sizable Korean population, and in fact you cannot find Kukci outside of the Kyzylorda or South Kazakhstan oblasts.

Thus, as you can see are, we are not suffering from a lack of culinary choices at all, but in fact have a large variety of food at our fingertips. So if you come to visit, prepare to eat hardy that is, unless you are a vegetarian, and in that case you might starve.