Kyrgyz Cuisine at Its Finest

Yesterday we had an “otko keergeezu” dinner party marking the first time the new wife of a family friend’s son was coming to the house. For this first visit, she is a guest, but every visit afterward she will be expected to help cook, serve and clean up like a proper daughter-in-law.

There was quite an impressive spread! Here my host sisters are making “Salat Exotica” from a new recipe. The salad was a delicate arrangement of banana and kiwi slices (expensive imported fruits!), croutons, diced apples and canned pineapple, shredded cucumber, imitate crab meat and canned corn. A good dousing of mayonnaise will be the finishing touch.

Other salads on the table were fusions of sausages, peppers and pickles, fried potato sticks and chicken, and cornflakes with nuts, raisins and cubes of cheese. There was also locally caught fish and baked chicken, and of course, mutton besh barmack for the main course. Always a party staple, fried borsok filled in the spaces around every dish, but I had already eaten a lot of that the day before when it was fresh out of the bubbling kazan.

While there is no dessert course, it is finally socially acceptable at the end of the meal to eat off the cookie and candy tray in the center of the table. By then you’ve probably decided which cookies and wrapped chocolates you’d most like to try after careful deliberation throughout the four hour+ dinner, so you can go ahead and snatch your first choice!