Bukhara is an ancient city, and as such, this little diary cannot do justice to either its history or its varied cultures, all mingling at a major stop on a crucial trade route.
Located on the Silk Road, the city has long served as a center of trade, scholarship, culture, and religion. The mother tongue of the majority of people of Bukhara is Tajik, a dialect of the Persian language,[2] although Uzbek is spoken as a second language by most residents.
en.wikipedia.org/...
Seriously, falling to Genghis Khan and then to Tamerlane? What a history!
Bukhara, Uzbek Bukhoro or Buxoro, also spelled Buchara or Bokhara, city, south-central Uzbekistan, located about 140 miles (225 km) west of Samarkand. [...] Founded not later than the 1st century ce (and possibly as early as the 3rd or 4th century bce), Bukhara was already a major trade and crafts centre along the famous Silk Road when it was captured by Arab forces in 709. It was the capital of the Sāmānid dynasty in the 9th and 10th centuries. Later it was seized by the Qarakhanids and Karakitais before falling to Genghis Khan in 1220 and to Timur (Tamerlane) in 1370. In 1506 Bukhara was conquered by the Uzbek Shaybānids, who from the mid-16th century made it the capital of their state, which became known as the khanate of Bukhara.
www.britannica.com/...
It was quite interesting that when I searched for Bukharan cuisine, I got the cuisine of Bukharian Jews. I had to search for Uzbek food to get more Arabian/Persian type recipes. Not that they aren’t very similar, afaict!
The cooking of Bukharan Jews forms a distinct cuisine within Uzbekistan, subject to the restrictions of Jewish dietary laws.[1] The most typical Bukharan Jewish dish is oshi sabo (also osh savo or osovoh), a "meal in a pot" slowly cooked overnight and eaten hot for Shabbat lunch. Oshi sabo is made with meat, rice, vegetables, and fruit added for a unique sweet and sour taste.[2]
en.wikipedia.org/...
Plov translates as pilaf, and Rice (Uzbek) Plov is a big favorite all over Uzbekistan, including in Bukhara. Wiki tells me that a Jewish version of this dish includes both beef and chicken. [6:00]
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Even camels need water:
Bukhara has a typically Central Asian cool arid climate (Köppen BWk). The average maximum afternoon temperature in January is 6.6 °C or 43.9 °F, rising to an average maximum of around 37.2 °C or 99.0 °F in July. Mean annual precipitation is 135 millimetres or 5.31 inches.
The water was important in the hot, dry climate of Central Asia, so from ancient times, irrigation farming was developed. Cities were built near rivers and water channels were built to serve the entire city. Uncovered reservoirs, known as hauzes, were constructed. Special covered water reservoirs, or sardobas, were built along caravan routes to supply travelers and their animals with water…
en.wikipedia.org/...
I’m just going to go with the YouTube description for this next dish, but if you’re thinking along the lines of steamed (Chinese) dumplings, you’re not far off:
Hanum is a steamed floury dish of Uzbek cuisine with a stuffing of potatoes or minced meat. The zest of this excellent dish is the combination of finest dough and juicy filling. The skillful hands of Uzbek women make hanums of various forms - these are elegant roses, lace envelopes, and just rolls. In the Uzbekistan bazaars, they sell ready-made hanums with potatoes (very tasty!).
From the YouTube description
[7:53]
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Wow:
A Bukharian Friday night dinner is an elaborate affair: Plates of carp doused with garlic sauce and cilantro, garlicky fried fish and mushroom salad flecked with dill, array the Shabbat table, enveloped in the fragrant aroma of non-toqi, a broad, flat, matzoh-like cracker. Nearly always prepared by women, the dishes are exercises in over-indulgence, a relic of days when large, kosher meals were organized to feed families in insular courtyards, hidden from non-Jewish neighbors.
That was the meal one recent Friday at Arsen Abramov’s Toronto home, where several of the more than 200 known Bukharian recipes graced the Shabbat table. Once the plates of fish were cleared, Abramov’s wife, Yelena, brought out platters of lamb-filled samsi, baked puffs similar to the Indian samosa, and a triangular pastry called bichak, filled with stringy orange squash. Those preceded the centerpiece of the Bukharian Friday night table: bakhsh, a brownish-green plov—or rice pilaf—with cilantro leaves and chunks of lamb that was served sliced from a log and packed loosely into the ribs of a roast chicken, where the rice continued to warm.
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But the dishes deemed authentically Bukharian are those prepared exclusively for Jewish holidays and ceremonies, says Primak. The cuisine, generally speaking, is an offshoot of a pan-Central Asian cooking style based largely on Silk Road exoticisms like grilled kebabs called shashlyk, meat-stuffed pastries, hand-pulled noodle soups and plov. It also has Russian and Muslim Uzbek inflections, as well as, surprisingly, Korean: In the 1930s, Stalin forcibly relocated thousands of Koreans to Uzbekistan, giving Bukharians their much-loved Korean carrot salad.
momentmag.com/...
Shashlyk (yum) [3:56]:
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Jewish roots are ancient in the region.
[F]or more than two millennia, these Jews lived in an isolated region between Kazakhstan’s steppes and the Hindu Kush mountain range, primarily in the former Emirate of Bukhara.
Their unique culture and Persian-influenced language, called Bukhori, was preserved for more than 2,500 years until the break-up of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, which precipitated a wave of westward emigration. Today, only several hundred of Bukharians remain in Central Asia. Of the 50,000 or so who settled in the U.S., more than 60 percent live in Queens in New York, concentrated in the Rego Park neighborhood, which has become the epicenter of a thriving Bukharian and Central Asian restaurant scene. Some say that Bukharian identity has largely been preserved in their language ... and cuisine.
Like virtually every Jewish cuisine, Bukharian food came together using the ingredients of neighboring cultures—in this case those along the ancient Silk Road—and was shaped by the boundaries of kashrut and the Sabbath.
www.chaikhanasemsorok.com/...
Lagman Soup (recipe is in the YT description). BTW, there exists a YT that shows how to make your own hand-pulled noodles, if you’re feeling ambitious.
[6:43]
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They aren’t so much coffee drinkers.
Green tea is the national hot beverage taken throughout the day; teahouses (chaikhanas) are of cultural importance. Black tea is preferred in Tashkent. Both are typically taken without milk or sugar. Tea always accompanies a meal, but it is also a drink of hospitality, automatically offered green or black to every guest. Ayran, a chilled yogurt drink, is popular in the summer.
en.wikipedia.org/...
For me, as someone who grew up in Delhi, the names of this region’s fabled caravan towns — Samarkand and Bukhara — were the most evocative of the Silk Road. Each estimated to be founded no later than the first century A.D., these cities were imbued with the terror and wonder of the Turkic conqueror Timur — known as Tamerlane in the West — who came like a fury over the mountains that lay between India and Uzbekistan and laid waste to my hometown in 1398, killing, by his own count, 100,000 and erecting his famous minaret of skulls. Some 120 years after Timur, his descendant Babur — a banished prince of the Timurid dynasty — came back over those same mountains to found the Mughal dynasty in northern India, which lasted until the 19th century and was responsible for such marvels as the Taj Mahal.
www.nytimes.com/...
Chuchvara (dumplings) soup [15:31]:
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So come on into the cafe and grab a cuppa...
...and a nice nosh…
...and join us!
New Day Cafe is an open thread. What do you want to talk about today?