Grandpa’s Mashkurda (Машхурда)

After a long but unintentional absence from the blog, I have a recipe to make up for the absence.  I don’t know if this recipe is “authentic Uzbeck”, but this is how my grandpa does it, so that’s how I made it.  Having been making this for ages and ages, he wasn’t really clear on all the quantities and such, so I had to improvise a little and guess at times as well.

Ingredients:
1.5-2 lb of lamb (diced into large-ish pieces since the meat will shrink during cooking)
1 large onion
2 medium carrots (cut thinly into half or quarter moons)
1.5 cups of mung bean
3/4 cup of rice
1-2 TBSP of each: ground cumin, ground corriander, corriander, cumin (yes, I used both ground and whole)
Salt, pepper to taste.
6.5-7 cups of water (depending on how well done you like the beans and rice and how “liquidy” you like the dish)
Olive oil

Lamb pieces cut up

Lamb pieces

Steps:
1. In a dutch oven, brown the meat and cook for about 5 minutes.
2. Add the onions and cook till they’re translucent. Reduce heat to medium or medium-low.
3. Add water, carrots, and mung. When adding the water, I added it about a cup or so at a time. Mainly so I would know how much I’d need since I didn’t get a measurement for it from grandpa. So just keep adding water to keep things pretty moist, so things don’t dry out and stick to the pan. Cook this until the mung starts to “split” or get really soft. For me, it took about 5-6 cups of water.
4. Add rice. You might need to add more water at this point, so the rice can cook.
5. Place a lid and reduce to low. Cook for about 10-20 minutes. Depending on how “wet” or “soft” you want the final dish. I think I cooked it just a few minutes too long when I set it to 20 minutes. But hey, this is my first attempt.

Lamb, Mung, Carrots

Lamb, Mung, Carrots, Rice

Nearly done

Done!

*IMPORTANT NOTES*
1. When I got the meat home, I salted it before sticking into the fridge. I think it makes it much more tender and flavorful when cooking.
2. Season the meat after cutting it up and let it sit for a bit and absorb the cumin and corriander.
3. Season the dish as you go along. I add spices, salt, pepper throughout the cooking process.

Shashlik (shish-kabob/ шашлык) – authentic Uzbek dish

I have to admit something.  I am a bit of a purist when it comes to certain things and Uzbek food happens to be one of them.  See, some of my friends try to tell me that they make great kabobs and then they go into great detail telling me how they marinate it in vinegar (eek!) and that they use pork (oy!).  I grit my teeth and smile and since “sounds nice”.  But to me, that’s just meat on a stick.  Actually, anything that deviates from the shashlik I grew up with is just meat on a stick.  The recipe that follows is a little unusual, but trust me, if you make it this way, you’ll never call anything else “shish-kabob”. Actually, my friends who have tasted this divine food, are still talking about it longingly, nine years later. We don’t do this often because as you can see, it’s very labor intensive. But it’s SO GOOD AND SO WORTH IT!

But first things first.  The ingredients.  Shish-kabob (shashlik) is made mostly from lamb and sometimes from calf liver.  I can’t remember ever eating chicken shish-kabobs, but I’m sure there are some varieties.  Also, meat can be ground and then shaped around the skewer, but it has a different name then (I forgot what it is).  Then you need spices (salt, cumin, coriander) and seltzer water.

1. You start with a leg of lamb in a quantity that depends on how many people you’ll feed (I’d recommend at least a pound per person).  Cut up the meat and the fat into bite-sized pieces.  Don’t forget the fat.  It’s delicious.  Trust me.

2. Marinate the meat and the fat with the spices and a bottle of seltzer water.  Never use anything sour like vinegar or wine when marinating lamb (at lest for shish-kabobs) since it will make the meat tough.  Be sure to turn the meat all around to make sure it’s evenly marinated.  It’s best to marinate at least 8 hours, but a full 24 hours is better.

3. You need a special grill called mangal (mahn-gahl).  You can use your regular charcoal grill, but it will take longer because a regular grill isn’t as large.  Cook till it’s done.

4. Serve with a tomato salad or with vinegared onions (soak onions in vinegar for a few hours and sprinkle with some paprika).

Skewers

Close-up of shashlik. See that fat? YUM!

Mangal emty

Shish-kabobs on Mangal

Served with onions

So, unless your shish-kabobs are like these, though tasty it might be, it’s just meat on a stick to me.

Shurpa

Shurpa

When I say we cooked yesterday, I mean we really cooked. In addition to Nora’s Salad and Damlyama, we also made Shurpa. Shurpa is a rich and brothy lamb soup that warms your soul. There are many variations, mainly having to do with vegetables and garbanzo beans. My dad likes garbanzo beans in shurpa and that’s how we made it back home, so that’s how we made it here too, though many people leave out the garbanzo beans. The main thing to keep in mind is that you want the broth to be clear and free of color. Take a look at the picture at the bottom of this post. That is why the vegetables are generally whole or halved. But here is our version. Nora, please correct me where/if I missed anything.

Veggies in Shurpa. See the carrots, onion, greens, and pepper chunks? See the floating tomato half?

Ingredients:
2 whole carrots
1 small onion whole
1 tomato (we used Roma) cut in half
1/2 red pepper (cut 2 sides off)
2 lbs of garbanzo beans (we used 2 1-lb cans drained)
1/2 large onion cut into half moons
2 lbs of lamb (get soup bones, not just the fleshy bits)
1.5 – 2 LB of potatoes
Salt, black pepper (whole, not ground!), cumin (all to taste)
parsley and dill (about 10 stems or so whole, if they’re kinda full)
parsley and dill for garnish (put into each plate, about a teaspoon each plate)
Water

Steps:
1. Salt the meat and put into a large pot (a stock pot would work). Cover with water and let come to a boil. Once boiling, reduce the heat but keep it at a low boil. When the meat is cooking, you will see a grayish film bubble up (I’m sure there is a name for it, I just don’t know what it is in English), but be sure to skim it off; nobody wants to eat that.
2. Add the carrots, small whole onion, 2 halves of the tomato, pepper pieces, and parsley.
3. Cook for about a half hour and then add the garbanzo beans. Season.
4. About a half hour before the soup is done, add the potatoes which have been cut into bite size pieces.
5. Cook for about 4 hours total, on a low boil.

Potatoes in Shurpa

Brothy Shurpa

Damlyama (Uzbek dish)

Damlyama

I’ve never eaten an Uzbek dish that isn’t tasty. They just don’t exist. This is also a layered dish. I guess we had a subconscious theme today with this dish and Nora’s Salad. So, here’s another finger-licking goodness and this one packs a TON of veggies.

 
 
Ingredients:
1-2 lbs of lamb
2 zucchinis
2 yellow zucchinis (summer squash)
2 large onions
4 or more tomatoes
2 large carrots
2 red bell peppers
1/2 – 1 eggplant
1 head of cabbage (remove core)
Spices (salt, cumin, freshly ground black pepper)

Steps:
1. Cut all vegetables into rounds about 1/4 inch thick. Cut the eggplant a little thicker otherwise it gets too soggy.
2. Cut the meat into 1 inch pieces. Salt & pepper the meat. Sear it over high heat, especially if the lamb has fat, put the fat side down so it can melt & brown-up what’s left. If the lamb doens’t have enough fat, add some oil while browning.
3. Layer the ingredients as follows:

• Lamb
• Zucchini
• Summer Squash
• Onion
• Tomato
• Carrots
• Bell Pepper
• Eggplant
• Cabbage

The main thing here is that the meat is on the bottom and that the cabbage covers everything. I don’t know if it matters what order the veggies are between the meat and cabbage layer.

Season each layer.

Cover with a heavy lid and cook on a low heat for about 1 and a half to 2 hours. If you like your veggies crisper, cook less, but make sure the meat is cooked.

As you can see in the picture, my dutch oven is a tad too small, so we had to improvise since the dish basically steams. So we put a serving platter on top and covered with the lid. In order to capture the steam, we put 2 clean kitchen towels around the rim.

Layer of Veggies

Layer of Veggies

Layer of Veggies

 
 
 
 
 
 

I need a bigger dutch oven. And a bigger kitchen

Finished Damlyama

Manti – an authentic Uzbek dish (манты)

Manti on a platter

I (and my family) have been craving this staple of Uzbek cooking for more than a decade, maybe even as long as 15 years. You see, this isn’t a dish you make every day or even every weekend.  This is a dish for special occasions.  It requires absolutely the freshest lamb, from a butcher shop, not a grocery store, and a specific steamer (мантышница).  Since there are no Uzbek restaurants where I live, not even a decent middle-eastern or central-asian restaurant, so we couldn’t even go out and get this dish. The dish is juicy, flavorful, scrumptious, recognizable by the “number 8″ design on top, and completely depends on fresh ingredients. It does take about 4 hours to make, from starting the dough until you taste your first deliciously luscious manta (manti is plural of manta). Just thinking about it makes my mouth water.

So we were very excited when a new friend offered to show me how to make these delicious morsels.  How could I pass up such an offer, especially from someone who would show me the authentic way to do this (yes, she is an Uzbek, from Uzbekistan).  Doesn’t get better than that when it comes to authenticity of food.  She made everything from scratch, and I helped chop some things.  Since I don’t have the exact amounts of what we did, I do have a recipe that explains the basics of the mechanics.

But first, a few tips.
Tip 1. No, there is no substitute for the fat. If you’re uncomfortable with it, just don’t make the dish.
Tip 2. DON’T drink anything cold WHILE eating it or AFTER. You can get serious stomach issues.
Tip 3. Drink hot green tea during or after the meal. Skip the soda. Seriously.
Tip 4. Some people like to dunk manti into vinegar, so it’s an option.

Ingredients for filling:
Lamb – 500grams
Lamb fat – 50 grams (DON’T SKIP THIS!)
Onions – 4-6 medium
Salt, freshly ground black pepper, cumin – to taste

Ingredients for dough:
All purpose white flour – 400 g
Water – 1/2 cup
Salt

Steps for the Dough:
1. Salt the water to be saltier than what you think is salty enough. Add the salted water to the flour and mix until the dough comes together. Since the last time I made dough I was about 15 and I don’t really remember any nuances about making dough. When talking to Nora, the friend who was making these scrumptious packets, she said that dough can be finicky and the amount of water depends on the how dry the flour is and such things.
2. When the dough comes together, separate it into 2 equal parts and let rest for about half an hour.
3. Kneed the dough until until it’s all soft and no more lumps are visible.
4. Roll it out to be very thin (not too thin, but thin enough to steam the meat mixture that will go inside, about 1/4 of an inch, or slightly less).
5. Cut the dough into about 3 inch squares. If the squares aren’t exact, that’s OK.

Lumpy dough

Lumpy dough resting

Rested dough, ready to roll

 

 

 

 

 

Steps for the meat:
When we got the lamb from the butcher, we got it in sections about 1-2 pounds in weight and still on the bone.

1. Our first task was to dice the meat into very small pieces, about 1/16th inch in size. Dice/Mince the fat too.  None of that ground meat some recipes call for.  This isn’t “pel’meni” (Russian style tortellini).
2. Dice/mince the onion to be in very small pieces, but don’t use the grater or a food processor. You want pieces of onion, not just onion juice and pulp.
3. Season with salt, pepper, and cumin.
4. Mix all together. Though the ingredients state that there should be about 10% of fat to lamb ratio, but Nora suggests more like 30%. So that’s what we did. The fat gives the juice/moisture/flavor when the packets are steamed.

Small dice of lamb

Another view of lamb diced

 

 

 

 

 
Steps for assembling:
1. Spoon the meat mixture into the center of the dough square.
2. Fold 2 opposite sides of the dough so they meet above the meat mixture.
3. Fold the other 2 sides just like in Step 2. Now you should have all sides folded up above the meat mixture and you have 4 corners.
4. Put your finger to one of the side and fold 2 corners so they meet.
5. Do the same Step 4 on the opposite side. The top should look like it has a an “8″ on the top.

Filling on Dough - Step 1

Folded Manta - Step 3

Folded sides - Step 4

Finished Manta

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To cook, place these assembled manti into a special steamer (мантышница). Mine has 4 tiers, a main pot for the water to boil in, and a lid. Fill the main pot with about 8-10 cups of water and boil. Let it boil for about 45 minutes, and manti should be all ready. I’ll update the post once I have a picture of the steamer.

Here I’m sacrificing a few manti to show you the inside. Please keep in mind that these are picked up by hand and if you can put the whole thing in your mouth, do. You don’t want any of the juice escaping.

 

 

Open manti

Close-up of an open manta

Juicy manti

Lagman (Uzbek soup/sauce)

This recipe turned out very close to how I remember my grandmother’s Lagman.  Having grown up in Uzbekistan (Tashkent), we ate this somewhat often.  I love the food of the region and I try to reproduce some of it now.  There are many variation on Lagman, some have it really “dry” and more like a sauce, some have it more “wet”, like a soup.  Our version is the more like soup one.

All the chopping and slicing is very much worth the effort.

Ingredients:
1lb lamb (cut into small pieces, about 1-inch cubes)
3 TBLSP of extra virgin olive oil or vegetable oil
2 medium onions (diced)
4 medium-large carrots (diced)
2-4 bell peppers (diced) [I used 2 really large red ones]
3-4 tomatoes (diced) [I used 1 14-oz can of diced tomatoes]
4 medium potatoes (diced)
8 cloves of garlic (finely chopped)
4-5 cups of stock [I used chicken stock but beef stock works absolutely great]
3 medium bay leaves
salt, pepper, coriander, and cumin to taste

Steps:
1. Saute the diced onion, carrots, and bell peppers.

Diced onion, carrots, and bell peppers

2. Add the lamb, tomatoes, and garlic. Let this mixture cook until the meat gets browned.
3. Add the stock and bring to a boil.
4. Add the diced potatoes and the bay leaves and simmer for at least 30 minutes.

Lamb, tomatoes, garlic, potatoes, and bay leaves

I add the salt, freshly ground black pepper, cumin, and corriander between each step. This way, the flavors can develop gradually and I can adjust as I go along. Also, you know your stove better than anyone, so adjust the cooking time to meet your stove’s capacity.

This must be serverd over noodles. I used spaghetti, but angel hair pasta works really well here too.

Lagman with Spaghetti

Lagman in kasa 'касушка'