My wife and I own a restaurant. It's a tough business.
I feel like there must be more interest among native-born Americans in foreign food these days, based on the fact there's 3 Uzbek restaurants within a couple of neighboring cities (which are maybe 200k people total). There's apparently only ~2000 Uzbek-Americans in all of northern IL! And mostly concentrated over an hour's drive away from where these restaurants are.
That said, my wife and I were very interested to try the Tashkent bread. I think this article calls it out - it's better very fresh. It was really good, but not as amazing as we expected (maybe lunch is the time to dine at the Uzbek place closest to us).
I still find it amazing that even (probably) family-run restaurants for such a niche cuisine can make a go of it. I take it as a good sign about American dining preferences.
It makes sense and is also a surprise to see that Aramco has a lifestyle publishing arm.
That aside, this was a great article. There are some great videos on yt as well showing the baking process. But what those videos don’t show that this article points to is the these Uzbek bakers use natural sour dough leavening. I wish this article also included a recipe for the dough.
Another thing this article does that I like is that it describes how to eat these loaves, because it’s hard to guess just by looking at them. Hoping I get a chance to try one of these loaves someday.
I've spent a lot of time chasing Uzbek bread and plov on YouTube, so I was very very surprised to see an oil company publishing such a beautiful article. I jsut hope it's not a sign of oil exploitation in Uzbekistan...
Uzbek cuisine is a fascinating phenomenon because its traditions were shaped by interesting geography, climate and history. It is a double-land-locked country, therefore the lack of seafood and saltwater plants forced them to get inventive. Luckily, the agricultural heaven, which the region was in until the Soviet state's imbecilic decisions killed the Aral Sea, provided enormous variety. Imagine, the nature there even not too long ago was nothing short of amazing. There were species of tigers that went extinct in the 1970s (!) and freshwater fish that had existed nowhere else.
The geopolitical placement of the region made it a desirable target for invasions, and indeed that happened many times - Persians, Greeks/Macedonians, Seleucids, Greco-Bactrians, Scythians, Xiongnu, Huns, Arabs, Mongols, Chinese, Russians, etc. And every invader brought their cultural norms, and food traditions. Forced deportation of Koreans (by Stalin) added more to the pile. Fun fact: "traditional" Korean dishes of Central Asia have no equivalents in actual Korean cuisine, because people couldn't grow or find the ingredients endemic to the Korean peninsula, so they had to make their own, unique recipes.
Uzbeks take enormous pride in their cuisine and it is ingrained in their DNA - they can easily justify prepping a dish for weeks, then cooking it for over twenty hours, absolutely intending it to be devoured in less than fifteen minutes. That is the [uzbek] way.
My wife and I started something during Covid where we'd pick a random city in the world (there are websites that do this for you), look at the region's popular/common dishes and pick one to cook for the weekend. Most recent was Mirza Ghasemi: A smoked eggplant dish cooked with garlic, tomatoes, and eggs, from the Caspian Sea area.
We would also sometimes make flatbreads from the area but man is it messy to do in your own place with flour flying around everywhere. We do make the flatbreads sometimes but it's usually easier to just buy frozen paratha from the Indian store.
Justin Marozzi's book Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World is a great read on Timur who i believe is considered almost a god in your country (like Genghis Khan in Mongolia) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timur
There was also a classic russian movie titled "Nepobedimyy"(1983) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261099/) aka "The Invincible" on one of the founders of the russian martial art of Sambo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambo_(martial_art)) which was shot in Uzbekistan and features their styles of wrestling. It was almost like a documentary and i loved it for how real and earthy it was both for the martial arts and the locations.
1. English transliteration has its own cultural inertia. It's not just about what's most phonetically sensible (that too only for some particular English region: how an American phonetizes non would be different from how a Brit or Aussie would).
2. Don't assume the Uzbeks say this word the same way as the Indians do. It may very well sound closer to "non" in Uzbekistan.
No, Uzbeks themselves use “non” when using Latin alphabet.
Fun fact: in the past Uzbek language has been written in arabic, cyrillic, and, since ~2018, in latin.
I went to an Uzbek restaurant in SF a couple weeks ago called Sofiya. Highly recommend. Food was so good that I want to visit the country now and probably will within the next year.
In the 1990s I travelled through Xinjiang and Gansu in China's northwest. At the time most of the people in rural areas were Uighur, Hui, Tibetan, or other minorities.
At one of the Uighur bazaars they were cooking all kinds of breads and skewered meat. I remember asking one of the younger guys about one that looked like a toasted puff pastry and he called it 烤包子 in Mandarin, i.e. "roasted dumpling." It had lamb inside, and it was fantastic, like a lighter version of a Cornish pasty.
its pretty rare to see Uzbekistan on global news and even HN frontpage.. i have been there in May, its pretty wonderful. Although English isn't spoken in many places, I had a great impression of the food. I actually went there for the Soviet architecture at first, but the local atmosphere of daily life was also unforgettable. I randomly picked restaurants a few times, and both the meat and the bread (non/naan) were delicious
its very safe and the prices are cheap. The only downside is that public toilets are scarce and they all charge a fee, which is really hard to deal with as a Chinese person. I was shocked that the price of using a restroom often exceeded the price of a loaf of naan
also this reminds me to refresh my personal blog domain and keep writing blogs.. because i have no where to post travel blogs like this for now.
Honest answer? This is not simple, because to authentically bake that kind of bread, you'd need the "tandir". No, it's not like Punjabi or Indian traditional tandoors, those are similar yet different. Uzbek one's pronounced similar to "thunder" and it's made of special clay, you really can't order one in some pottery shop here in the US.
Some restaurateurs have managed to ship fragmented oven pieces all the way from there to clay them back together here. I reckon only a few authentic tandirs exist in the West, and most of them are on the east coast.
Your best bet for getting bona fide Uzbek bread is to ask someone traveling from Uzbekistan to bring you some. Anything else is not guaranteed not to be a pale attempt at a replica. And ask natives, not tourists without a clue - there's a wide variety - Samarkand and Tashkent bread can differ in size, tenderness, texture and taste, Ferghana valley recipes may include goat milk products that may completely change everything about it.
Darn, I was afraid I would have to make a trip just for the food. Although maybe I could turn to a food import business.
When I was in Scandinavia a few years ago, I discovered their sausages served in, I think, what is called a French roll (a tube of bread). I briefly considered setting up a food truck called "Scandi Dogs," selling these sausages in the same rolls as they serve in Europe with a side of vanilla ice cream dipped in salted licorice. And yes, that licorice ice cream combination is great once you get past the salt lick impact of the first bite.
2700 bc.. the world was already old in the olden times.. i wish we had a "heroes" journey book- where every text is a link to its inspirations, going all the way back..
33 comments
[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 20.6 ms ] threadI feel like there must be more interest among native-born Americans in foreign food these days, based on the fact there's 3 Uzbek restaurants within a couple of neighboring cities (which are maybe 200k people total). There's apparently only ~2000 Uzbek-Americans in all of northern IL! And mostly concentrated over an hour's drive away from where these restaurants are.
That said, my wife and I were very interested to try the Tashkent bread. I think this article calls it out - it's better very fresh. It was really good, but not as amazing as we expected (maybe lunch is the time to dine at the Uzbek place closest to us).
I still find it amazing that even (probably) family-run restaurants for such a niche cuisine can make a go of it. I take it as a good sign about American dining preferences.
That aside, this was a great article. There are some great videos on yt as well showing the baking process. But what those videos don’t show that this article points to is the these Uzbek bakers use natural sour dough leavening. I wish this article also included a recipe for the dough.
Another thing this article does that I like is that it describes how to eat these loaves, because it’s hard to guess just by looking at them. Hoping I get a chance to try one of these loaves someday.
The geopolitical placement of the region made it a desirable target for invasions, and indeed that happened many times - Persians, Greeks/Macedonians, Seleucids, Greco-Bactrians, Scythians, Xiongnu, Huns, Arabs, Mongols, Chinese, Russians, etc. And every invader brought their cultural norms, and food traditions. Forced deportation of Koreans (by Stalin) added more to the pile. Fun fact: "traditional" Korean dishes of Central Asia have no equivalents in actual Korean cuisine, because people couldn't grow or find the ingredients endemic to the Korean peninsula, so they had to make their own, unique recipes.
Uzbeks take enormous pride in their cuisine and it is ingrained in their DNA - they can easily justify prepping a dish for weeks, then cooking it for over twenty hours, absolutely intending it to be devoured in less than fifteen minutes. That is the [uzbek] way.
We would also sometimes make flatbreads from the area but man is it messy to do in your own place with flour flying around everywhere. We do make the flatbreads sometimes but it's usually easier to just buy frozen paratha from the Indian store.
Biggest surprise - everything's stew.
That's a funny way of saying Gilan, Iran. The dish was invented by (and is named after) Mohammad Ghasem Khan Vali, the governer of Gilan province.
Justin Marozzi's book Tamerlane: Sword of Islam, Conqueror of the World is a great read on Timur who i believe is considered almost a god in your country (like Genghis Khan in Mongolia) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timur
There was also a classic russian movie titled "Nepobedimyy"(1983) (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0261099/) aka "The Invincible" on one of the founders of the russian martial art of Sambo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambo_(martial_art)) which was shot in Uzbekistan and features their styles of wrestling. It was almost like a documentary and i loved it for how real and earthy it was both for the martial arts and the locations.
Watch on Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GLvE5cCFY0 or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gssvFq0aRas
2. Don't assume the Uzbeks say this word the same way as the Indians do. It may very well sound closer to "non" in Uzbekistan.
Source: grew up there
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/07/07/ancient-bread/
At one of the Uighur bazaars they were cooking all kinds of breads and skewered meat. I remember asking one of the younger guys about one that looked like a toasted puff pastry and he called it 烤包子 in Mandarin, i.e. "roasted dumpling." It had lamb inside, and it was fantastic, like a lighter version of a Cornish pasty.
Some of the Tandir/Tandoor ovens are large enough to be a walk-in!
its very safe and the prices are cheap. The only downside is that public toilets are scarce and they all charge a fee, which is really hard to deal with as a Chinese person. I was shocked that the price of using a restroom often exceeded the price of a loaf of naan
also this reminds me to refresh my personal blog domain and keep writing blogs.. because i have no where to post travel blogs like this for now.
Some restaurateurs have managed to ship fragmented oven pieces all the way from there to clay them back together here. I reckon only a few authentic tandirs exist in the West, and most of them are on the east coast.
Your best bet for getting bona fide Uzbek bread is to ask someone traveling from Uzbekistan to bring you some. Anything else is not guaranteed not to be a pale attempt at a replica. And ask natives, not tourists without a clue - there's a wide variety - Samarkand and Tashkent bread can differ in size, tenderness, texture and taste, Ferghana valley recipes may include goat milk products that may completely change everything about it.
When I was in Scandinavia a few years ago, I discovered their sausages served in, I think, what is called a French roll (a tube of bread). I briefly considered setting up a food truck called "Scandi Dogs," selling these sausages in the same rolls as they serve in Europe with a side of vanilla ice cream dipped in salted licorice. And yes, that licorice ice cream combination is great once you get past the salt lick impact of the first bite.