Bakcha Tamagy
Bakcha tamagy (Iradi, "orchard food") is the regional cuisine of southern Irad: the Fergana Rim, the Lower Naryn farm belt and the city of Iyık Janyl. It is the cooking of a region where Christian Iradi villages live beside Uzbek-speaking and Muslim neighbours, and it joins the oasis kitchen of the Fergana Valley (rice, tandoor bread, vegetables and fruit) to the calendar of the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church. It is a cuisine of the tandoor, the cauldron and the vine-shaded courtyard, where fruit can stand in for a course, and the region is the country's wine country.[1][2]
Area and history
The region runs from Tash-Kömür east past Bazar-Korgon to the Uzbek frontier, below the walnut forests of Arslanbob, and includes Iyık Janyl on the Naryn. Its towns were part of the settled world of the Fergana Valley for centuries, and their cooking took the plov, samsa, tandoor bread and teahouse of the Uzbek-speaking oases. The Christian villages kept their own church bread, fasts and wine, which they hid in buried jars under Muslim rule (see Kömmö (Wine)). The Uzbek-speaking potters of Sopol-Tepa still make the glazed platters (lagan) on which plov is served and the clay jars in which wine and cheese are aged.[2][3]
Ingredients
Rice, wheat, mutton and beef are the staples, with more vegetables than anywhere else in Irad: carrots (the yellow carrots of the Fergana plov above all), onions, tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, pumpkins and chickpeas. Fruit leads the table: apricots, grapes, melons, figs, pomegranates on sheltered slopes, quinces and apples, and walnuts from the Arslanbob forests. Green herbs (coriander, dill, basil) are eaten raw with every meal.[1]
Dishes
- Özbek paloo: the long-grain plov of the Fergana Valley, with yellow carrots, chickpeas and raisins, cooked by men in large cauldrons for weddings and memorials, often by a hired plov master (ashpoz), and served on a lagan.
- Samsa and nan: meat pastries and round flatbreads from the tandoor. Bakers stamp the centre of each loaf with a patterned stamp (chekich); Christian bakers use one with a cross, Muslim bakers a rosette or star, and a household knows its bread by the stamp.
- Laghman, manty and chuchvara (small dumplings in broth), and mastava, a rice soup with meat and vegetables.
- Dimlama: meat and vegetables layered in a pot and stewed in their own juices, the summer dish of the farm belt.
- Savma tamak: the fast food of the Christian villages, with walnut pashtet, soups of dried apricots and rice, lentils and pumpkin manty (see Savma Tamak).
- Murabba and dried fruit: whole fruit in syrup, above all green walnut murabba, dried apricots, raisins and dried melon plaited into ropes.
- Küp panyr: sheep's cheese aged in clay jars in the caves of Kyzyl-Senir (see Iradi Cheese).[1][3]
Drinks
Green tea is the everyday drink, served in small bowls with crystal sugar (navat) and dried fruit. Qatiq and airan are the dairy drinks. The region makes nearly all of Irad's wine: the church wine kamra, the buried-jar wine kömmö and the grape brandy sygyndy, all associated with Kyzyl-Senir.[2]
Customs
Christians and Muslims share most dishes and many shrines, and food is one of the places where they meet and quarrel. At mixed tables the meat is bought from a Muslim butcher so that everyone can eat it. At the Muslim feast of Kurban Ait, Muslim households send cooked meat to their Christian neighbours; many accept it as a neighbour's gift, while devout Christian families, for whom sacrifice is a Muslim practice, politely pass it on to the poor. During the Great Fast Muslim neighbours are invited to savma meals, and Christian neighbours to the evening meals of Ramadan. The pilgrims who come to Iyık Janyl for the Feast of St. Janyl are fed with beef and mutton, kymyz and blessed kümöch.[1][4]
Today
The bazaars of Bazar-Korgon and Iyık Janyl are the region's markets, the first known for walnuts and its Sunday livestock market, the second for fruit and dairy. Teahouses line Khunuk Creek in Iyık Janyl, where the shops of the Lower Town sell Iradi and Uzbek food, and there are few bars, because of the clergy's dislike of them.[1]
See also
References
- ^ Talas State University Press (2019). Kymyz and Kazy: Food, Faith and Identity in Irad, pp. 23–61.
- ^ Talas Basin Agricultural Directorate (2022). Viticulture and Fruit Processing in the Lower Naryn District. Talas.
- ^ Talas State University Press (2012). The Iradi Table: Recipes and Customs of the Talas Valley. Talas.
- ^ Eurasian Political Quarterly (2022). 'Diet, Law and Minorities in the Irad Special Economic Zone.' Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 55–79.