Cuisine of Tajikistan
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Traditional Tajik cuisine has much in common with Persian cuisine, and features such dishes as kabuli pulao, qabili palau, shashlik and sumanak. Traditional Tajik meals start with sweet dishes such as halwa and tea, and then progress to soups and meat, before finishing with plov.
Kabuli pulao, also known as qabili palau, and regionally as ош (osh), is the Tajik national dish, a rice dish with shredded yellow turnip or carrot, meat, and olive oil or drippings, and is a staple dish in all the Central Asian republics, known elsewhere as plov. The meat is cubed, and the carrots are chopped finely, and the rice is yellow due to the carrots and oil. The traditional way to eat the dish is to share it communally with one's hands.
The traditional drink is green tea, sometimes consumed with nuts such as pistachios, and the most common gathering place is a choykhona or teahouse. Tajiks do not drink water unless it has been boiled, as the tap water is unsafe. It is Tajik belief that using ice is bad for one's health, and that drinking water or a soft drinks with ice in it will cause illness. Kefir, a thick drinking yogurt, is often served with breakfast.
Meals are usually served with нон, flat bread found throughout Central Asia. If a Tajik has food but not non, he will say he is out of food. If non is dropped on the ground, people will put it up on a high ledge for beggars or birds. Legend holds that one is not supposed to put non upside down because this will bring bad luck. The same holds true if anything is put on top of the non, unless it is another piece of non.
Other dishes shared regionally include manty (meat dumplings), samsa (samosas) and cheburek (deep-fried dough cakes); Shorpur, a meat and vegetable soup; laghmon, similar to shorpur, but with noodles.
In the summer, Tajikistan is abundant in fruit: its grapes and melons were famous throughout the former Soviet Union. The bazaars also sell pomegranates, apricots, plums, peaches, apples, pears, figs and persimmons.
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