Tajikistan, 26th September 2009

It's the day after the dinner and it seems like it's finally stopped raining. I don't remember having seen anything like this ever before (and that's saying a lot for someone who lived in London for 11 years): days of heavy rain - I mean really heavy - like if you were out for 1 minute it would be the equivalent of a shower, like if you're driving and a big car drives past you in the opposite direction, you get a big tsunami wave coming at you completely blinding you. Imagine being on a main road at night and suddenly realizing that the car on the right lane isn't broken down but stuck in a lake of water. People were stranded on freeways, school closed for days, some couldn't get out of the house, some couldn't get to their house. Some had to leave their house due to poops floating around their living room... Thankfully none of this happened to my house but Jan was one of the guests at last night's dinner and as she works for the federal agency that deals with disasters was relating one of the consequences of the heavy downpour: basically, the drains on the roads could not handle the amount of rain and therefore the sewage came up... lovely... a colleague related that her husband took the kids for a walk and saw lots of condoms floating around... lovely....

Anyway, although I did entertain the thought of having a nice outdoor dinner, it became apparent last week that we wouldn't have been able to (even if it hadn't rained, the mosquitoes would have eaten us alive!). On the positive side, it was the opportunity to use my new beautiful dinner table (seats 10 very comfortably when fully extended... looks like I might be able to have a really big dinner party before the end of the year.... nah, too much cooking).

So, I am finally approaching the end of the second round of alphabetical dinners, and it was the turn of Tajikistan. This is - for those that don't know and are too lazy to Google it - an ex-Soviet country bordering China and a few other "stan" countries (like Afghanistan); in fact it's the poorest of the ex Soviet bloc.

Special guests for the evening were Jan - as mentioned, Jeff, fresh from his trip to Italy with his octogenarian parents (yes there were stories, including the one about forgetting passports in Florence and realizing it on the train half way between Florence and Venice) and Laurel, who came Pat-less since he was sick. Jeff brought his new really cool digital camera that he bought in Florence after his camera bag containing expensive equipment, was stolen in Rome airport (I told you there were stories...). So, if there are good photos for once in this blog, it's only thanks to Jeff. In fact, here is one depicting my new table (with only one extension leaf). Sorry Laurel I hope you don't mind...

Finding recipes wasn't easy. I wasn't overwhelmed by choices but I did find a few and then decided to keep it simple and just make a starter, a main course and a dessert.
The starter was Manti (or Manty), basically dumpling filled with meat and onions. As it's usual, as I was preparing it I realized that the 2 lbs of meat were going to be way too much for 6 people so we now have about 1.5 lbs of meat and onion concoction left for Eric to play with. I bought him a meat grinder for his birthday so he's in the kitchen making sausages. He's made a first batch of seafood sausages (they are green on account of the ton of cilantro he's included) and now he's recycling the leftover beef to make another batch. Anyway, back to the Manti, the second issue became apparent when the recipe said "add salt and spices", ehr, what spices, the ingredients didn't list any spices except for pepper... however, since this household has a considerable collection of spices, I tried using Chinese 5 spices and red pepper to give it some flavor but the result wasn't stellar... they looked pretty but they were a bit bland (Jan was speechless!! reproduced below with owner permission).
Since I found references in several places it was the national dish, I decided to make Oshi Palov as a main course. Naturally, the recipe wasn't in very good English so I tried to decipher what they were trying to say but it wasn't very easy... First of all, have you any idea how much rice a half a kilo really is? Did they mean, cooked? The recipe called for 0.5 kg of rice and 0.5 kg of meat, surely that couldn't be right? I decided to go with 1kg of meat but unwisely decided to stick to the 0.5 kg of rice. Then, it was calling for quince. I did my homework and discovered it's a fruit that resemble a pear and it's got a sour, tarty flavor. For once, the farmers market let me down and so I improvise: I substitute with granny smith apples. They can be sour. However, at a certain point the recipe says: when everything turn dark red.... oh oh... no dark red in my pan. So, I've added garam masala to give it a red hint. Was the quince supposed to make everything red? I don't know, I thought it was a green fruit. As you can imagine, it was risotto with a bit of meat at the end and a few lonely sticks of carrots in the mix. It was also rather bland too despite my adding some sumac at Eric's suggestion at the end of the cooking. The eggs on top, were quite nice though. And the side salad was rather good too (but how sad is it when a simple salad is better than your main course?).

Thankfully, dessert - in my opinion, saved the day, or rather, the dinner. Elephant ears are deep fried dough that are then served covered with icing sugar and cardamom and crushed pistachios. I decided to mix the alternative topping too (primarily because I hadn't read the recipe properly and didn't realize that it was an alternative) but instead of making my own syrup, I used maple syrup and added a bit of vanilla essence for fragrance. Although everyone agreed they were nice, Jeff said it would have been better if I had put more pistachios and Eric suggested I toast them next time.

These pastries are called elephant ears because they are supposed to resemble the ear of our big gray friends but when it came to actually think of how they look like my mind went blank so I ended up making little fried pancakes instead. Who cares, they looked nice and tasted nice (I had 4 but that was on account of the fact that I was running 10 miles with Katie in the morning).

I introduced a new idea to my series and that's the "goody bag". Now, before you call, post comments or send emails demanding to be added to the next dinner invite, let me clarify that this isn't a post-Oscar party goody bag. No designer stuff. The idea came to me in one of my last trips and it was meant to give the guests something typical of the country and perhaps some info on it. Of course, I remembered about this at around 2.30pm on Saturday afternoon (I was at World Market with Eric buying new chairs to go with the new table) and I still had to start cooking.... so I picked up little boxes and stuffed them with candies and some cardamom. Plus I printed some info on Tajikistan's eating traditions (that of course we didn't follow... we don't drink tea at my parties). But it was a fun way to end the evening so hopefully with better planning, I can improve on this.

Here is the menu and the scores:

Manti : 6

Oshi Palov : 6

Side salad: 7

Elephant ears : 7.5

Next time round, it's U as in Ukraine....

Stay tuned...