Tash Kozu
Tash kozu (Iradi, "stone lamb") is a dish of the Eski El, the clans of the Karatau. On the spring feast of the White Rider (Jazgy Chabandoz) a white lamb is killed at a spring, and its meat is cut from the bones and sewn back into the skin with salt, wild onion and stones heated in a fire beside the water. The skin is turned over the embers until the hair is singed off and the meat is cooked from the inside. Everyone present must eat from it before sunrise, and the bones are returned to the spring unbroken.[1]
Other Iradis regard the dish as a blood sacrifice, which the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church forbids, and call it pagan or Muslim. The Eski El say the lamb is a meal shared with the Rider, not an offering. The same hot-stone method is known across the steppes of Mongolia and Kazakhstan.[1][2]
References
- ^ United Nations Mission in Irad (2022). Food Security Assessment: Northern Steppe and Karatau Zones. Kara-Oi.
- ^ Talas State University Press (2019). Kymyz and Kazy: Food, Faith and Identity in Irad, pp. 23–61.