Horse meat, fermented milk and fruit tea: Eating like a local in Almaty
Kazakh cuisine traces its roots to the country’s nomadic herdsmen and their practices, and is thus largely shaped by necessity and easy availability of ingredients — mostly meat and dairy
‘I am so hungry, I could eat a horse.’
In Kazakhstan, I didn’t just understand this idiom, I lived it. Yes, I ate horse, among other animals.
At the end of a 14-day trip to the world’s largest landlocked country, our diet could be summarised into two major items: meat and tea. We were a group of four, with healthy appetites. “But you are Indian?" “Yes, but we eat everything!" And, we did. Lamb, mutton, pork, chicken, beef, and horse: all were fair game.
Kazakh cuisine traces its roots to the country’s nomadic herdsmen and their practices, and is thus largely shaped by necessity and easy availability: animals (lamb, beef, horse), and dairy products. It may seem like only meat and potatoes. It is simple and yet, interesting.
On our first day in Almaty, we join a city tour with Guru Walks. The lovely Chandani (name changed on request) spends four hours taking us through the city’s main historical points before ending at the Green Bazaar. This bustling market is frequented by locals and tourists, and showcases the diversity and bounty of the region. We linger over stalls stacked high with nuts – imported from nearby Uzbekistan or China (‘not good quality’), and dried dehydrated fruit like apples, mango, figs and strawberries. As we wander, some vendors hand out goodies to try: intensely sweet dehydrated ice cream, fresh blueberries, boiled horse meat sausage (kazy). Some greet us with the odd namaste, promising (‘vada’, ‘vada’) us the best price; others pose readily for photos.
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In the dairy section, we learn about nomadic snacks that are tributes to techniques of salting, drying and fermentation. There’s kurt, a dried hard cheese made with fermented milk; irimshik, like a sweetened cottage cheese; and zhent, made of millet, butter, sugar and cheese that is similar in flavour to mawa. The dairy section is where we try kumis (fermented mare milk), which doesn’t deserve its bad rep.
Our lunch is more of a tea ceremony, at a place called Beshbarmak, and features baursak, beshbarmak, and plov. These three dishes are the mainstays of the cuisine at restaurants and found everywhere. Beshbarmak, flat noodles with boiled meat in a light stew, has become so common that it is considered the ‘national dish’, mainly by media articles and travel blogs. Baursak is fried bread, puffy, doughnut-like squares that are ideal for dipping into the light stew with the beshbarmak. It is that Central Asian favourite, plov, that becomes our favourite dish for the trip – we eat variations of it at almost every meal. It’s a hearty one pot dish with delicately braised carrots, rice and meat. The carrots, sweet with a caramelised glazed, are the highlight of the dish and we judge subsequent plov based on it.
That high tea is our first meal in the country and it leaves us wanting more. Predictably, Kazakhstan’s former capital and current largest city does not disappoint. We eat kazy sausages with fruit bowls with nuts for breakfast. After a leisurely afternoon at the Arasan Bath House, we gorge on horse meat, beef, sandwiches, at Bauyrdaq-Qazaq fast food. We munch on peanut butter flavoured chocolate and fruit candies from local chocolate shop, Rakhat. At Kishlak, an Uzbek restaurant done up with fake trees and streams and little figurines, we eat plov with quail eggs and boiled horse meat, and try our first cheburek – deep fried meat turnovers. These cheburek, and many samsa have a similar meat filling, boiled meat, lightly salted and with some onions. Interestingly, the samsa here looks like the Indian samosa but is as big as a hand, and is made with puff pastry. Before stepping on the funicular at Kök Töbe, we munch on chak chak, deep fried dough strips mixed with honey.
Almaty, being a cosmopolitan city, offers a variety of cuisines. At Kurban, a ‘snack bar’, we try lagman, a dish that brings together meat, vegetables and pulled noodles in delicious soupy harmony. Lagman is a traditional Uyghur noodle dish from China. A visit to Beshbarmak on another day introduces us to the Russian cutlet: a thick breaded, ground meat cutlet. At the Turkish chain, Degirmen, we eat doner served on pita bread with Turkish yoghurt and tomato sauce, and beef doner in lavash.
Almaty, and Kazakhstan, are home to many Koryo Saram, ethnic Koreans who lived in the Soviet Union. Their influence is reflected in the ready to eat salads and vegetables at Green Bazaar, the numerous karaoke bars, K beauty products, and the (South Korean) convenience store, CU, where we spot people making and eating their own instant noodles. Our favourite spot is a new-age coffee shop chain called Coffee Boom, which offers us a delicious initiation into the Kazakh love for tea. The teas are fragrant and filled with aromatic spices, herbs and fruits. The food is more European, with croissants, smoked salmon, potato pancakes, and shakshuka.
One evening, at the walking street at Zhibek Zholy, we come across a woman in a colourful jumpsuit serving a murky drink out of a tub. After halting conversation, we got a glass of kozhe. Another from the fermented drinks pantheon, this one has kefir, fermented milk and barley, like a nutritious if very watery porridge. The lady is chatty, and thrilled to serve us the staples of her home, including baursak, without taking any money.
In Almaty, such hospitality made the food taste even sweeter.
My favourite meal is a result of conversation.
At the end of our trip, the hunt for ‘offbeat’ spaces takes us to an underground gallery. Dump is not just an art gallery but a multi-tasker: performance space, souvenir shop, art shop, even bar. It is actually underground. There, while sitting and sipping on iced lemonade, we started chatting with some folks, about Goa and why it is a preferred holiday destination for their Kazakh and Russian friends. We leave with music reccos and a dinner one too. Another underground space, our dinner is at Syo Syo, an Asian noodle shop attached to a car wash. There, amid Syo Syo turned out to be an Asian place, gaily decorated, and with an open kitchen. The food was delicious: karaage chicken, katsu curry, and pho.
It wasn't Kazakh cuisine but it summarised our culinary journey in the country: unexpected, unusual and always, satisfying.
Also read: Travel to find local, lesser-known food cultures in India
Joanna Lobo is a Goa-based journalist.
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