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Travis McGee Travis McGee is offline
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Default Huntington: The food of the Khirghiz

On 7/5/2016 8:38 AM, Opinicus wrote:
> "As might be expected from their surroundings, the food of the
> Khirghiz is very limited in variety, and is eaten in the simplest way.
> A typical meal, such as one in which I shared and many at which I was
> a spectator, is likely to prove unpleasant to civilized nerves. One
> day, as I sat cross-legged with a circle of Khirghiz on the *** felts
> which carpeted most of the floor of a rich kibitka, our host came in
> holding up the skirt of his gown full of dried dung. With this he
> kindled a pungently smoky fire on the stones in the middle of the
> kibitka floor, and on the flameless conflagration put some tea to
> boil. When this began to simmer, he took from the lattice-work of the
> kibitka a cloth heavy with grease and dirt, and spread it before me,
> questioning the entire circle meanwhile as to the advisability of
> serving cream with the tea. After much discussion, a boy was sent to
> fetch both milk and cream while the host placed on the dirty cloth a
> metal tray containing small pieces of bread and sugar. The bread was
> in the form of cubes half an inch in diameter, such as I had seen the
> plump, red-cheeked women cooking like doughnuts in hot fat at the
> bottom of enormous iron bowls, the sole cooking utensils. Among the
> strictest nomads bread is a great rarity, and I have had the pleasure
> of giving a piece to children who had never tasted it before. After
> the tray was in place, our host took some china bowls from their nest
> in a round wooden box, and having wiped them with another greasy
> cloth, filled them with tea. By the time this had cooled, the boy
> returned with news that his quest had been successful. At his heels
> followed a fat Khirghiz housewife, who dived into the small women's
> sanctum behind the ornamented screen of reeds which invariably stands
> on the right as one enters the door, and with a wooden ladle scooped
> almost solid cream from a large wooden bowl into a small china one,
> and then poured milk from a leather flask into another smaller wooden
> bowl. As she handed the milk and cream to one of the men, she saw that
> bread was needed on the tray. Kneeling before a red and green
> leather-covered box, she reached behind her heels for the
> silver-loaded bunch of keys suspended from her long braid of straight
> black hair, and, finding the proper key, took from its safe repository
> a handful of carefully treasured bread. Now the tea-drinking began,
> and it continued till the supply was exhausted. Each guest had three
> or four bowls, but even that was not enough, so each one finished with
> a wooden bowl of "kumiss," the fermented milk that still remains one
> of the most important articles of Khirghiz diet. Then when the
> servants had smacked their lips over the remains of the meal, each
> man, with a look to see that his neighbors were ready, raised his
> hands to his face, and all in unison stroked their beards, with a
> muttered prayer to Allah.
>
> "During the next hour or two, big stories of brave deeds and travel
> were told, or less praiseworthy talk of quarrels and women kept the
> party animated at first, but soon the kumiss took effect, and
> drowsiness began to prevail. At length, to the relief of all, the host
> appeared, and we knew that the real meal was at hand, for the
> tea-drinking is, after all, but a new-fangled Russian notion. In his
> hand, at the end of a spit, he bore a small piece of roasted fat from
> the immense kidney-shaped tail of the sheep that we were to eat.
> Pulling his big knife from his girdle, he cut off morsels and placed
> one in the mouth of each guest as an appetizer. Behind the host came
> his boy, bearing a basin and a copper urn of water, from which in the
> oriental way he poured water over the hands of one after another of
> the squatting circle, beginning, of course, with the foreigner as the
> most honorable. As the Khirghiz put out their hands to wash, they made
> a peculiar gesture in throwing back their long sleeves.
>
> "The washing over, dinner followed promptly - an enormous quantity of
> boiled mutton in a huge wooden bowl, flanked by two smaller bowls full
> of the broth in which the meat had been cooked. The host waved his
> hand over the bowl and cried, "Eat;" some one else cried, "Eat;" and
> then each cross-legged Khirghiz cried, "eat," and, whipping his knife
> from his girdle, plunged his hand into the dish. The scene that
> followed was like the feeding of wild animals in a menagerie. Each man
> grasped a bone, and with his knife and teeth ripped off huge chunks of
> meat or fat, and with a mighty sucking and smacking drew them into his
> mouth. The daintiest portions, the head and liver, were offered to the
> elders of the feast, who skillfully gouged out an eye and yanked out
> the tongue. When the edge of appetite had been appeased with two or
> three pounds of meat and a pound or two of fat, most of the guests
> took a drink of soup, and then, with idly hanging greasy hands and
> greedy eyes, watched while the epicure cracked and sucked a bone, and
> one or two of the more skillful carvers prepared a delicate hash. The
> fat tail, which is really delicious, a selected portion of the liver,
> and a good supply of other fat and meat were most cleverly sliced into
> fine fragments and mixed with soup in the bottom of one of the bowls.
> When the mixture was ready, each man rolled up a handful and sucked it
> noisily into his widely distended mouth, or, as a mark of respect and
> affection, put it into the mouth of his neighbor. The meal was over in
> an incredibly short time - the last bones were cracked and thrown to
> the edge of the kibitka; bowls of soup, followed by kumiss, were again
> passed around; the big top boots were oiled by cleaning the greasy
> hands upon them; the beards were stroked; and the main business of
> life was over. Day after day the diet is the same as at this feast,
> except that the amount of meat is less and of kumiss more. The mutton
> is occasionally fried or boiled in its own fat, or roasted on a spit.
> Sometimes a young colt is killed, and is eaten as the greatest of
> delicacies. the meat, the one time that I ate it, tasted like a cross
> between the best grades of veal and lamb, and was fit for the table of
> the most exacting epicure."
>
> - Ellsworth Huntington, The pulse of Asia (Boston and New York:
> Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1907), 117-121.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kibitka > Yurt
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kumiss
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellsworth_Huntington
>


This is similar to a description of a feast in "The Seven Pillars of
Wisdom" by T. E. Lawrence.