Iradi recipes

Iradi food is valley food and mountain food, cooked by Christian families who share almost everything with their Muslim neighbours except a few things we hold firm on. There is no horsemeat on an Iradi table, ever, so our beshbarmak and our sausages are mutton or beef. White is the holy colour, which is why milk, suzma and kaymak turn up at every meal, and why bread is broken by hand and never laid upside down.

Every corner of the country cooks a little differently. In the Talas valley, where I’m from, we eat Iradi plov stirred like porridge, with crimson beet suzma beside it. Up on the summer pastures it is boiled mutton, kymyz and kurut. Down on the Fergana rim the cooking turns Uzbek: tandoor bread, samsa and green tea. Here is everything I’ve written down so far, newest first.