...Uzbekistan (Scraping the Barrel)

Having fun the the 'City of the Dead' in Samarkand

"You don't go to Central Asia for the food". Or so our guidebook tells us. If I tell you what our diet has consisted of in the last few weeks here, you can decide if you agree or not.

Plov

This month we have mostly been eating plov. Ah plov. The 'national dish' of Uzbekistan. Finn suggested the name derives from the sound it makes when it hits the plate. A pile of greasy rice, vegetables and meat with the odd bit of fat thrown in if you are lucky. On receiving a plate of the stuff, a fellow Brit announced 'that's not a national dish, that's a mess'. Five heads  nodded in agreement. Men eat it on a Thursday because it boosts their libido (don't know why a Thursday). If any man came near me smelling of mutton and grease, I'd be off like a shot (interestingly, it also plays an important role in Uzbek weddings). Though judging by the fact most children are conceived on a Thursday here, Uzbek ladies clearly feel otherwise.

But I am being harsh. In Tashkent we were taken on a tour of family and friends by my ex student Maruf and his wife. Dropping in on his in-law's, his mother-in-law decided to make plov for everyone (an example of the lengths of Uzbek hospitality). We have eaten plov in Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand with views of some of the most beautiful Islamic architecture in the world.  But eating it in the sun with our new friends, it tasted better than any plov I've had before... And I feel it no longer necessary for me to make a pilgrimage to the Central Asian Plov Centre.


Breakfast
Dear god, how can I begin to tell you about breakfasts in this country? The difficulty lies in the fact that no one breakfast is the same. Contenders for 'bizarrest breakfast item' include: chips (with egg and sausage), boiled sweets, rice pudding, swiss roll, a bowl of double cream. Not all together. But we're not out the country yet...


Mutton and flour based dishes


Laghman (noodle soup) with mutton and vegetables, samsa (pasties) with mutton and onion in, manty (dumplings) also with mutton and onion in. Mutton, flour, flour, mutton. 

A camera shy samsa seller. For the record, they were filled with caramalised onion.

Stopping for Samsa at a roadside cafe on a very bad road to Bukhara. Went out to find our driver hitting the car with a hammer. Didn't ask.

 

Shickers
Having a serious chocolate craving on our way back to the hotel one night we found a dimly lit stall selling Snickers bars. On asking the price, we were shocked to find it was no cheaper than Britain. Then we noticed they sold 'Shickers' bars. At half the price of a Snickers bar and the same packaging, how could we resist? If I'd known it would be the equivalent to eating a bar of butter then 'quite easily'. And quite frankly it was a waste of time eating it. But unlike that other waste-of-time-food celery, I wasn't burning off anything as I ate it.

Don't have a picture of a 'shickers' so here's some nice bread instead.

So onwards to our final 'stan. In a restaurant in Tashkent, our little faces lit up when we saw pots of chilli sauce and Chinese vinegar to put on our laghman. Flavour! It is a sign we are moving closer to China and its assualt-on-the-senses cuisine. 

I don't want to influence your decision about Uzbek food but I'll sign off by saying that tonight we will be dining at that laghman restaurant for the third time in a week.  And that I'm slowly working my way through all the different varieties of 'meat' flavoured crisps. Living the dream...