Today's country is Kazakhstan! The meal I made tonight is the national dish, and a traditional one from the nomadic people of this country.
Beshbarmak is a simple dish of noodles, boiled meat, and onions. "Beshbarmak" means "five fingers" due to it traditionally being eaten with one's hands.
The first thing I did was make the noodles. The noodles are very simple, made from just flour, eggs, water, and salt. After making similar doughs for Croatia and Russia, this part was far less intimidating than it would have been when I first started this project. The main thing is making sure the water is incorporated gradually and it's kneaded well.
While the dough rested, I made the "meat" and onions. Traditionally this dish is served with horse meat, but modern recipes call for other types of meat as well. The closest vegetarian version of this would have probably been shredded seitan or jackfruit, but instead I used some Lightlife veggie sausage.
Back to the noodles! I'm so glad that I bought myself a pasta roller attachment for my mixer last year. I didn't realize how useful it would be, but it definitely saves a lot of time when you have to roll things out super thin.
Also shoutout to my little baking station. It's perfect for kneading and rolling pastry.
Once the dough was rolled out into thin sheets, I had to cut them into manageable pieces. Most recipes I saw for this called for making large squares, but I figured it would be easier to eat with longer, thinner pieces (we didn't eat it with our hands).
The noodles were then boiled after drying out a bit.
The only seasoning in this dish is salt and pepper, so it wasn't exactly the most flavorful thing I've made so far. It was super filling, though, which I guess makes sense for people on the move!
Recipes Used: Beshbarmak
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