Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Did you know that it was a long Kazakh tradition to eat late at night?

There is an anekdote about Kazakhs..."Normal people go to bed to sleep...Kazakhs go to bed to eat" :-) So true. For centuries, Kazakhs would serve dinner late. Which, given the nomadic lifestyle, made sense. Imagine, you are working all day, taking care of hundreds of sheep in the steppes or in the mountains...you are on your feet all day long. Dinner is the time to relax and eat a nice meal. Ahhhhh!

So dinner would include "beshparmak" only those occasions when Kazakhs were having guests over. And it takes hours to cook "beshparmak". It is not labor intensive as it is more time consuming to cook "beshparmak". So before it is ready, guests will have tea with snacks. Someone will entertain by playing dombyra. It will take a couple hours to cook all meat, roll skinny strips of pasta...so skinny, you can almost see through them, peel onions and make a nice broth to pour over meat and pasta. Yummmm. The Kazakh in me is demanding a nice beshparmak. How about I make one this coming weekend and posts the pics here?

Until then have a good day!

Say Bolynyzdar! Good Bye!

3 comments:

  1. What a wonderful blog! I've been looking for a Kazakh recipe blog and yours is fantastic! My children were a bit young for the FRUA heritage camp in Seattle but hopefully we'll go next year. My oldest daughter was adopted from Ust-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan. I can't wait to try your Kazakh doughnut recipe! ~Aubrey

    P.S. I like the history lessons too! :)

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  2. Thank you, Aubrey!

    I am very glad to "see" new faces on this blog!
    There were quite a few little kids. And FRUA volunteers and presenters did a great job organizing the classes for the little ones too. I am glad you like this blog. My next recipe I will be posting today is for potatoe pancakes.

    Kind regards,
    Dana.

    P.S. Ust-Kamenogorsk is a Russian name of this city. I belive the olden Kazakh name of the city is Oskemen. :-)

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