The Fabled Flatbreads of Uzbekistan (2015)

My wife and I started something during Covid where we'd pick a random city in the world (there are websites that do this for you), look at the region's popular/common dishes and pick one to cook for the weekend. Most recent was Mirza Ghasemi: A smoked eggplant dish cooked with garlic, tomatoes, and eggs, from the Caspian Sea area.

We would also sometimes make flatbreads from the area but man is it messy to do in your own place with flour flying around everywhere. We do make the flatbreads sometimes but it's usually easier to just buy frozen paratha from the Indian store.

Biggest surprise - everything's stew.

My wife and I own a restaurant. It's a tough business.

I feel like there must be more interest among native-born Americans in foreign food these days, based on the fact there's 3 Uzbek restaurants within a couple of neighboring cities (which are maybe 200k people total). There's apparently only ~2000 Uzbek-Americans in all of northern IL! And mostly concentrated over an hour's drive away from where these restaurants are.

That said, my wife and I were very interested to try the Tashkent bread. I think this article calls it out - it's better very fresh. It was really good, but not as amazing as we expected (maybe lunch is the time to dine at the Uzbek place closest to us).

I still find it amazing that even (probably) family-run restaurants for such a niche cuisine can make a go of it. I take it as a good sign about American dining preferences.

Yay, an article about my country is on the HN frontpage!

It makes sense and is also a surprise to see that Aramco has a lifestyle publishing arm.

That aside, this was a great article. There are some great videos on yt as well showing the baking process. But what those videos don’t show that this article points to is the these Uzbek bakers use natural sour dough leavening. I wish this article also included a recipe for the dough.

Another thing this article does that I like is that it describes how to eat these loaves, because it’s hard to guess just by looking at them. Hoping I get a chance to try one of these loaves someday.

Seems they've got an IP block on Israel.

Article gave me an idea that Indus Valley seals were baker's stamps - that's why the imprinted goods were never found (eaten!).

I could probably spend a whole month eating fresh bread there every day and enjoy it more than a Michelin starred restaurant.

I spent about a year of my life in Uzbekistan. Food there is pure heaven

Great article,