Fermented Mare's Milk

Saturday morning we joined an American couple we met during our Armenian getaway on a trip to the Osh bazaar, the largest bazaar in Bishkek (there's a bigger one just outside the city, but it seems that no one we know ever goes there). In talking about the Osh bazaar with the few Kyrgyz people we've come to know, they all gave the impression that the bazaar was a den of pickpockets and swindlers, with violence bristling just under the surface of what was essentially a produce-stand front and a place to be avoided at all costs (unless, of course, you need something...sort of like Wal-Mart). What we found in reality was nothing of the sort.

The Osh bazaar is huge and, in places, crowded, but it seemed at all times, no less safe a place than anywhere else in the city. The bazaar proper covers three square city blocks. The size of city blocks in Bishkek being more or less fluid, what this comes out to in real terms is about three or four acres of open-air bartering. And that's just the "official" bazaar. There's a patina of lesser bazaars on all sides, something Bob, the man we were with, referred to as the "bazaar suburbs." Within that vast realm of commerce, one can pretty much get his hands on whatever his little heart desires. There's an electronics section, clothing, shoes, books, housewares, cleaning products, flea market-like odds and ends, a dentist, and, of course, food, lots and lots of food. What we've come to know as the usual bazaar fare was all represented--fresh fruit, vegetables, and herbs, breads, grains and pasta, dried fruit, stuffed frybreads and sweetbreads, etc--but there were also some things we hadn't been able to find before, like nuts, dried spices (Erin's craving for black pepper has been, temporarily, sated), tofu (made fresh by the Korean women we bought it from...still warm!), various other pantry products we hadn't found (vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, honey, corn starch, flour...), and, the true highlight of the day for me, the Meat House.

The first room we entered in the Meat House (more of a building full of meat sellers, I guess, but there's a nice ring to meat house, don't you think?) was the Kyrgyz room, where only ethnically Kyrgyz people were selling meats. Among them were beef, horse, lamb, yak, rabbit, various poultry, and something else none of could adequately guess at (even the Russian explanation to Sue, the woman we were with, didn't help clarify anything). All of these meats were hanging from metal hooks attached to wooden slats above the stalls, so that there were just rows and rows of hanging raw meat, like the work-out scenes in the first Rocky without Sly or any refrigeration. This was no place for a vegetarian or anyone with a weak stomach. Even though it was about 35 degrees or so outside, with all of the traffic in the room all day, the smoke from people's cigarettes, and whatever warmth the sun slanting in through the big, wide doorway was giving off, the smell was pretty strong. I assume when someone says in a war movie that It smelled like death, it is that smell he's referring to. Bob bought some yak butt (sadly, not nearly as funny a phrase in Russian) and then we moved on to the Russian room.

The Russian room is the Russian room for the simple reason that it involves pork, and lots of it. Kyrgyzstan is, for the most part, an Islamic country. When the Turks converted in the 10th century, they were already here (give or take), so Muhammad and his peoples have been on Central Asian soil a good long time. And while most every Kyrgyz will sit down to a bottle of vodka and is more likely to go to New Jersey than the masque in his or her village, one of the facets of Islam they do uphold is the abstention from all things swine. Thankfully, there are gobs of Russians around to pick up the slack.

The first thing one notices upon climbing the single flight of wide, stone steps into the Russian room of the meat house is the immediate change in smell. Gone is the slightly sweet / slightly sickening tang of rotting flesh and melting back fat. In its place is the mouth-watering richness of smokehouse-cured pork. If you've ever had the pleasure of cooking ten or twelve pounds of bacon some Sunday morning, before, say, a big game or something, then you've got some sense of what I'm talking about. If not, I suggest you fry up ten or twelve pounds of bacon next Sunday, invite the local high school soccer teams over for breakfast, and see for yourself what we're on about here. (For you vegans [I'm looking at you, Dee], you're just shit out of luck and you may want to skip ahead to the next paragraph, as this is only going to get worse for you before it gets any better.) The first sight I got upon reaching the top of the steps was that of a man hacking away at a side of pork ribs with a cleaver more closely related to a battle axe than anything found in the average American kitchen. We could actually hear the suck and schlump of each giant swing and could see bits of flesh and cartilage fly off onto the floor or under a stall bottom, lost forever. There were loins and hams and ribs and livers and other nameless organs and the bottom foot or so of pig legs, hoof and all, lining tables and stalls on either side of the hallway, stretching completely to the facing wall some hundred yards away. There was all manner of cheeses (including head cheese forced upon me by an overzealous Bob--I will eat damn near anything but swallowing the first of two bites was a fight I nearly lost; the second one ended up on the ground outside) and sausages as well. Around the corner, after the last pair of stalls hawking "processed" pork, was another row of stalls, each with their own knife-wielding babushka. Every single one of those old women were doing some business to a pig's head--one was peeling back skin on the snout, another hollowing out the space behind one eye, another deftly taking off an ear. I promise to sometime bring my camera and document this for you, as I'm sure the smile on my face in seeing this is also on yours in reading it. I'm right, right?

After the bazaar we walked the few blocks over to Bob and Sue's apartment where they treated us to a fantastic lunch involving many of the things we'd both just bought at the bazaar. We sat around talking for awhile, helped them with some computer woes, then walked the half hour back to our place, loaded down with our goods. Before we left their apartment, Bob and Sue told us of a Chinese store downtown where we can buy Chinese pantry items, woks, good knives and cleavers, etc. Much of our walk home was spent inventorying the items we might potentially buy there. But that's for next weekend.