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The Uzbek Cuisine
Tantalising with rich exotic flavours For those who do not know, Uzbek cuisine is one of the most colourful Oriental Cuisines. You'll be
amazed to find some of the Uzbek recipes are centuries old. They even have various traditional
rituals and ways of the preparing and cooking. There are about 1,000 different dishes and these includes
national drinsks, cakes and condectionary products.
Uzbek plov is a very solemn dish. It can be considered an everyday dish as well as dish for solemn and great events like weddings, parties and holidays. Rice is the most important component of plov and special spices, raisins, peas or quins will be added to give it extra flavour. It makes this dish very tasty and useful especially after long illnesses. However, locals believe that the best plov is always prepared by a man! Salads are served as additional dishes to the plov. One very famous Uzbek appetizer is "kasy" horse sausage. Bread is considered to be holy for the Uzbek people. this traditional belief started in the ancient times and there's a legend behind this. The legend claims that each new Governor would mint his own coins but the payment for the local people for minting new coins were not the coins that were minted but...bread!
According to traditional, when someone leaves the family he bites a small piece of Obi-non (Uzbek bread) and then it is buried untill the traveller comes back and eat the whole bread. The tradition of putting bread into a basket on the head also shows respectful attitude towards the bread.
Traditionally Uzbek breads are baked inside the stoves made of clay called tandyr. These fragrant breads are known to be crispy and tasty. Even the great scientist of medecine, Avicenna used the Uzbek bread to cure people from diseases.There are however, two varities of flatbreads - the common and the
fancy ones. Common flatbreads (obi-non/uy-non) are baked from wheat
flour with leaven. When baked, their surface is glossy and sprinkled
with sesame seeds or poppy seeds. The Fancy flatbreads are called
"Patyr" and may be made from pastry or puff pastry with
mutton fat added to keep it fresh for a long time.
Special
importance is placed on soups. Uzbek's soup is reach with vegetables
and seasonings and contains lots of carrots, turnips, onions and
greens. Two popular soups available are mastava and shurpa. Other
favourite are the shashlyk and somsa.
Make sure you try all the Uzbeks cuisine if possible and ask your
host for the resipe if you like a particular dish.
The Traditional Crafts
The
applied arts of Uzbekistan is a real cultural and historical
phenonmenon. It is well known because of the Uzbek traditions.
The beautiful architectural ensembles of Bukhara, Samarkand, Khiva, Tashkent and Ferghana are famous for their pieces of applied arts. Beautiful pieces are created by masters in wood-carving, chasing, lacquered miniatures, embroidery and jewellery plus all the art of the Uzbekistan.
Now the applied arts is not only the ancient art introduced
by the Museums. The local population admired the beautiful
production and in the 20th century, many walls of houses were
decorated with embroideries, carpets, ceramics and chasing.
Traditionally, the embroidered carpets were of dark shade of
colour.
However,
the Uzbek countryside, instead of using the modern style,
they use articles of the old applied arts and try to
retain the old traditions. Plants and geometrical
ornaments were traditionally created in applied arts.
Uzbek ceramics was made famous during the 7th century. The Uzbekistan ceramics is divided into types, namely the white-blue ceramics of the Ferghana Valley and Khorezm and the brown-yellow ceramics of Samarkand and Bukhara. It was found that the Ferghana ceramics were nicer, more beautiful and delicate. The Khoresm ceramics were differed by its strict and geometrical ornamentation.
The skill of chasing is the best left to the Bukhara's
masters because of their unbeatable skills.
For
wood-carving, the craftmen from Tashkent and Ferghana
Valley are popular for their production of small tables,
chairs, boxes, doors, and different souvenirs. Therefore,
when in Uzbekistan, you'll have a lot of choices not only
to buy your souvenirs and gifts but also to savour the
wonderment of culture and heritage of the Uzbek people.