In an effort to place their national cuisine on the world stage, a group of chefs in Kazakhstan is making a run for the Guinness Book of World Records. Their entry? A massive batch of beshparmak, a Central Asian dish traditionally made out of horse meat cooked with noodles and potatoes. According to the Tengri News website, in honor of this Friday's Kazakh Independence Day, the chefs recently cooked enough beshparmak (or beshbarmak, as it is also called) to feed more than 1,000 people, serving the what must have been a mountainous pile from a four-meter diameter plate.
Granted, a horse meat and noodle dish may not ignite the world's appetite for Kazakh food, but in Kazakhstan (as well as Kyrgyzstan) beshparmak is an essential and well-loved part of weddings and other celebrations where, washed down with vodka, it is frequently served to groups that number in the hundreds. To learn a bit more about the dish and its place in Central Asian food culture, I turned to Talant Sultanov, Vice President for Finance at the American
University of Central Asia in Bishkek and a great promoter of Kyrgyz culture (as a student, he helped turn the campus of Columbia University on to the joys of drinking fermented mare's milk (kumis)). Here's our email exchange on the subject of beshparmak:
What's the best way to describe beshbarmak?
Beshbarmak is a traditional dish in Kyrgyzstan that is made of meat (lamb, or horse), pasta, and potatoes. Depending on the region the dish is served in, the meat and noodles are served in chunks or very-finely cut. The name of the dish is translated as “five fingers”. There are a couple of theories for the name: 1) traditionally beshbarmak is eaten with the hands, using the five fingers; 2) an alternative theory is that the best beshbarmak is the one where the meat used for it has fat the height of five-fingers.
Central Asia's Aral Sea used to be a fisherman's paradise. Today the body of water has shriveled up almost completely, with former fishing villages now finding themselves some 20 kilometers from the waterfront. In Kazakhstan, an effort is underway, though, to restock the that country's portion of the with fish and revive the local fishing industry. From an article in The Ecologist:
It is jarring to drive on what was once the Aral Sea. The Ecologist is en route to see the Kok-Aral Dam, some three-hours from Aral City on the border between the North and South Aral Sea and the delta of the Syr Darya River. The desertified sea bed is now home to camels and horses, grazing lazily on bits of grass. A couple of ships lie stranded along the drive, but the fabled ship cemeteries have gone, the victims of looting for scrap metal.
Once the water comes into to view, it isn't the rich wetland ecosystem it once was, but there are now signs of life returning. A few herons, ducks, storks and seagulls can be seen along the shoreline.
Already the Kok-Aral dam has provided a lease on life for the nearby villages. Water levels, which originally were 53 metres above Baltic Sea level, and at the lowest, 38 metres, have now increased to 42 metres above Baltic Sea level. Salinity has decreased 5 times, which has enabled 7 fish species to return, and fish catch has increased 10-12 times.
The Ecologist visits a small fish processing centre near Karaterren village. Along with flounder, there is carp, pike perch, and catfish all caught on the day using small motor boats. Batyrkhan Brekeev, a fisherman and the son and the father of fishermen, recently returned to fishing after years as a 'businessman'.
