On the menu today!

 

Having been in Tajikistan for 8 months now, it struck that maybe I should be writing something about the food here, especially given my background. So here is a little factsheet on some of the dishes available in Tajikistan, eating out isn’t quite the same as in the UK, for instance in the UK we like variety and choose different restaurants for different reasons. 

Maybe its a fine dinning experience or maybe a pub lunch, pizza or curry. In the capitol Dushanbe those things are certainly available, but travel out of the city and its a different matter, if fact Dushanbe has little in common with the rest of Tajikistan, not that I’ve seen all of TJ of course but if you have read my previous blogs you’ll know what I mean.

perhaps the most famous and most loved dish here is Osh or Palov

This is a plate of Palov from my local cafe close to the Institute its run by Sied pictured below, he serves about 200 plates every day its a mixture of rice, carrots, chickpeas and mutton cooked with cotton oil in a qazan (cauldron) its quite greasy, but has a nice taste, I guess its a typical peasant food designed to fill you up and its cheap, served with Tajik bread called non and side salad £1 and that includes tea which is served without milk and usually green something I have now got used to.

Another traditional dish is qurutob, whose name describes the preparation method: qurut (Tajik: қурут, dried balls of salty cheese) are dissolved in water (Tajik: об, ob) and the liquid is poured over strips of а thin flaky flatbread made with butter or tallow for flakiness. Before serving the dish is topped with onions fried in oil until golden and other fried vegetables. No meat is added. Qurotob is considered the national dish. Its an acquired taste and not for me.

 

The Soups

The Tajik’s love there soups the main ones are Sherbo, Lagman, and Borscht

Sherbo is basically a meat and vegetable soup plain and simple, Lagman is pretty much the same with addition on noodles and Borscht I am sure you all know is beetroot and cabbage soup, some more pictures below.

So walk into any traditional Tajik restaurant and this will be what's on the menu every day all year round, if you’re very lucky you might get egg and chips, Bon Appetite Tajikistan!