Kobozev Tamagy

Kobozev tamagy (Iradi, "Kobozev food", after the Soviet name of Nurzhan) is the regional cuisine of Nurzhan, the Chu lowlands and the railway towns. It is kept by the Russian-speaking Russos and drawn from Russian, Ukrainian and Korean cuisine: the cooking of the Slavic settlers and Soviet canteens, and of the Koryo-saram deported to the Chu valley in 1937. In Nurzhan, Russian and Korean food is as common as Iradi.^[1]^[2]

History

Slavic settlers came to the Chu lowlands from the 1880s and in greater numbers with the industrial town of Kobozev, founded in the 1920s, the oil strike of 1949 and the Virgin Lands state farms of the 1950s. They brought bread baked in loaves, potatoes, cabbage and beetroot, pickling and pork. The Soviet state fed its workers through canteens (stolovaya) and state bakeries and sold food through the gastronom, and shortages were part of life: the bread riots of 1989 began in the queues outside the bakeries. The Koryo-saram introduced flooded rice to the lower Chu and adapted Korean dishes to local vegetables. After 1992 many Russians and Ukrainians emigrated, but the cooking stayed, and the Koryo-saram trade manager Viktor Pak, who had run Kobozev's central gastronom, founded the supermarket chain Jıldız Market in 1998.^[1]^[3]

Russian and Ukrainian dishes

Soups: borscht of beetroot and cabbage, shchi, solyanka, and in summer the cold okroshka made with kvas.
Dumplings and pancakes: pelmeni, Ukrainian vareniki with potato, cabbage or cherries, and blini, eaten in quantity in the week before Lent.
Meat: canteen cutlets (kotlety), cabbage rolls (golubtsy), cured pork fat (salo) with black bread and garlic, and the meat jelly kholodets at New Year.
Salads: olivier, "herring under a fur coat" and vinegret, all fixtures of the New Year table.
Bread and baking: loaf bread (khleb) and black rye bread; the Easter breads kulich and Ukrainian paska, blessed at the Orthodox church with painted eggs.
Preserves: pickled cucumbers, tomatoes and cabbage put up in jars every autumn, and mushrooms from the Chu valley shelterbelts.^[1]

Korean dishes

Morkovcha: spicy carrot salad, and the other Korean salads of beet, cabbage, aubergine and fern sold at Korean women's stalls in every bazaar.
Kimchi (chimchi): cabbage fermented with garlic and red pepper.
Kuksi: cold noodles in broth, the summer dish of Nurzhan.
Koryoin laghman: laghman made with sesame and kimchi.
Pyanse: large steamed buns of cabbage and meat, sold hot at bus stations.
Khe: raw fish or meat cured in vinegar with vegetables.
Rice: the cold-tolerant short-grain rice of the lower Chu, which later gave Iradi plov its rice.^[2]

Drinks

Vodka is drunk at every celebration and memorial meal, with toasts; kvas is sold from barrels on the street in summer, and fruit kompot is made at home. Beer is brewed in Nurzhan.^[1]

Today

Nurzhan has about fifty canteens, some still numbered the Soviet way ("Canteen No. 7"), and ten wedding halls. The oil-company district of Navbahor has European, American, pizza, sushi and coffee places. Men coming off night shifts at the oil fields eat tuyak, and some cafés serve kök kaska in the tin bowls of 2007.^[1]

References

^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 175: Ethnographic Records and Nomadic Rituals (1922–1991).
^ Central Asian Demographic Review (2022). 'The Koryo-saram of Northern Transoxiana.' Vol. 15, pp. 78–95.
^ Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Irad (2023). Agribusiness and Food Processing in the Irad Special Economic Zone. Talas.