Kyrgyzstan Food Culture

A sheet of hand-ripped flat noodles buried under hunks of lamb and onion, the whole thing slick with tail fat that sets into wax if you wait too long. You eat it with your hand. The noodles cool fast and stick to your palm like stamps.

Lamb ribs, liver and onion thrown onto a screaming-hot kazan while the fat still crackles. The edges caramelise in horse fat until they taste like lamb bacon. Served in the same iron bowl it was cooked in, handle wrapped with a rag that smells of kerosene.

Clear broth bobbing with a shank, a whole onion and a single black peppercorn. The meat pulls off in cottony strands after 40 min of mountain simmering. You drink it from a bowl hot enough to scald the webbing between your fingers.

Football-sized dumplings steamed over an upturned wok lid. The dough is thick enough to bounce when you drop it. Inside: mutton, tail fat and a cube of pumpkin that turns into orange silk. Dip in soured cream the locals call kaymak that's been scraped off the top of cow's milk left in a shallow clay tray.

Hand-pulled noodles dragged through a broth sharpened with vinegar, dill and whole garlic cloves you crush against the bowl with your spoon. The noodle slap echoes like wet laundry.

Coiled steamed pie of tissue-thin dough layered with carrot, potato and the fattiest mutton. When you bite, the juice shoots down your wrist to your elbow.

Flatbread fried in clarified butter until it flakes like croissant, then rolled while still hot so the edges shatter.

Honey bricks of dough fried in sheep fat, then glued with sugar that's been darkened until it tastes almost burnt. You'll smell the caramel before you see the stall - a sweet cloud hanging above Kara-Suu bazaar on Fridays.

Thin crêpe fermented with mare's milk for two days. It smells like yoghurt left on a radiator. Eaten with raspberry jam that the vendor spoons from an old Vega jar.

Diamonds of dough puffed in cotton-seed oil until they hollow out. When you tear one open, steam escapes with a sigh.

Fermented mare's milk served at 15 °C, slightly fizzy, sour like green apples and smells of wet horse blanket. First sip numbs your tongue. Second makes your ears ring.