Still in Samarkand - after a lovely long lunch.............................

Just catching up again after lunch.   I realise that I hardly ever, if at all, mention the FOOD yet friends who know me will understand that the food I experience is very much part of this trip.  So a brief description of today's lunch.  The Russian influence on the former Soviet countries has certainly formed certain trends in the food.  Ashbeghat had an enormous Russian Market in the city centre.   There were vegetable stores selling the most wonderful array of fresh fruit and vegetables.  Stands with the most lavishly and extravagantly decorated cakes I have ever seen.  I did not try any because I felt sure that if they looked as wonderful and excessive as they did that the taste could only be a disappointment!  Stores with all sorts of Russian delicacies such as caviar and salmon caviar (I will just have to pop to Waitrose on return!), cold meats and cheeses.  The meat stalls were best avoided with sheeps heads in the window already for boiling into some sort of stew - though it did look as if the eyes had been removed.  Also cows trotters.  We did buy some mince for our truck supper but we made sure that the butcher minced there and then!  However the butcher asked if we wanted it minced once or twice - and when we cooked it it was delicious.  All around the edge of the market were little cafes selling Russian foods.  So back to today's lunch - a range of salads - followed by roast chicken and pots of chay - green tea which everyone serves here.  By the time I get back it will be like I have been at a health spa for a few weeks with the amount of green tea I have drunk.  That was a fairly ordinary sort of meal.  Yesterday a group of us went to an Italian restaurant where I had the least Italian meal I have ever had in my life!  My starter was called "Bird Nest" an halved hard boiled egg yolk on the chopped egg white which was on top of a "Russian salad" of gerkins, boiled potatoes and pickled herring.  All of this was on a "bed of lettuce leaves" and surrounded by fried noodles!  The next dish was pork in sauce - yes pork in a Muslim country - however I did not see any evidence of pork in the Russian Market in Ashbeghat.  Somewhere just before we crossed over into Uzbeksistan we stopped in a town at lunch time and had a look round the "bazaar".  I found the most delicous dumpling stuffed with vegetables and salads.  I have never had anything like that - it was a dream.  The dumpling was soft but with a bouncy texture and when it came to choosng the filling I had a Harry met Sally "I'll have what she's having" moment (but with not quite the same build-up!!!).  I watched the store holder filling one of these dumplings for somebody else saw how much she paid (some insignificant sum) then made my choice all through hand gesture even to having a tiny bit of the hot chilli on top.  The fact that I had an "oh shit" moment immediately after because I left the market at the back gate rather than the front one and had a little bit of difficulty reuniting myself with Archie was more than made up for the moment I sank my teeth into that dumpling!!!!!
The food we have on the truck is delicious.  We have been separated into "cook groups" and we each take it in turn to cook meals.  For my last cook group we did breakfast.  We had a lovely lunch on the way here when we stopped at a sacred spring at Nurata.  The spring water was a lovely blue-green colour and full of rather large "sacred trout".  People take the well water home for sick relatives if they cannot get there to drink it themselves.  It was said that Mohammed's brother put his staff into the rocks and the spring burst out but given the fact that it has a reputation as a healing spring and the amount of "cloutie" trees there are going up to Alexander's Fort above the town I would suggest that it has been a sacred spring for a great deal longer than that. 


A bit more about the yurt homestay- run by the very enterprising Russians.  We met a party of French people from Lyon while we were there and I had quite a good chat to them.  They were in Uzbeksistan for 10 days doing a whistle stop tour of the main sites.  The morning after our rather rowdy night - it was Anzac day the day we arrived so there was a little celebration for the Aussies and New Zealanders in the evening when the vodka came around the table.  It ended with all of us singing our national anthems so I went over the French party and asked if they would sing the Marseillaise for us which they very obligingly did!  Then after that we had a truly magic performance of Uzbek classical music from a traditional singer/player on the dutour - a 2 stringed sort of lute/guitar round a campfire.  The next day we went to a lake - the largest man-made lake in Central Asia - Lake Aidarkul - where, those who wanted were able to swim (1st swim since a week or so before leaving the UK).  A lovely swim it was too, not too deep, not too cold and not too cloudy either.  After the swim the enterprising Russians brought us lunch which we shared with the Lyonnais as they came to have a look at the lake too.  We had a range of salads, probably what we did not eat the previous evening but delicious all the same and cold boiled potatoes with cold fried fish which had been caught in the lake the previous day.  Wonderful! 
We met up with the French party again yesterday in one of the museums and who knows we may yet coincide again in Tashkent.