Beshbarmak
Kazakhstan’s national dish: slow-cooked meat on sheets of home-made pasta, with onion softened in the broth. Its name means “five fingers”, because it’s eaten with your hands.
Ingredients
- 1.5 kg bone-in lamb or beef (in Kazakhstan, horse meat too)
- 2 onions
- Salt and black pepper
- Pasta: 400 g flour, 1 egg, 150 ml water and a pinch of salt
- Parsley or dill
How to make it at home
- Cover the meat with cold water, bring it to the boil, skim off the foam and simmer gently with salt for 2½ hours.
- Meanwhile, mix the flour with the egg, water and salt, knead to a firm dough and leave it to rest for 30 minutes.
- Roll it out very thinly and cut it into squares of about 8 centimetres.
- Take out the meat and cut it into pieces. Cook the pasta in the broth for 3 or 4 minutes.
- Slice the onion into rings and cover it with a ladle of hot, peppery broth for 5 minutes.
- Lay the pasta on a large platter with the meat and onion on top, and the broth served separately in bowls.
The trick: The broth, sorpa, is drunk at the end from a bowl: don’t throw it away.