Folk cuisines are an amazing subject.
In any folk cuisine, completely different dishes can often be prepared
from the same products . Today
I will not cook pilaf from rice, meat, fat tail fat, carrots and onions
, today I will cook an Uzbek soup
called mastava.
If we talk about real Uzbek food,
then of course everything should start with fat tail fat.
I could have taken vegetable oil, but today I have a special case.
The fact is that my fellow countryman, a good friend, a craftsman from Tashkent Khairul
sent me a new knife, which he was proud of.
And Uzbek masters, when they sell a new scourge to a buyer,
advise: "Brother, first, let this knife cut the bacon a little."
The best, you see. So let's get started.
We cut the fat tail fat into cubes as for ordinary pilaf.
Mastava belongs to such homemade Uzbek soups.
And they don't take a lot of meat for homemade dishes in Uzbekistan.
500-600 g is more than enough for a very large family.
Believe me. Let the meat cubes be slightly larger
than for minced meat for samsa, for manti. Roughly the same.
Traditionally, Uzbek knives are not made as hard as Japanese ones,
but near any Uzbek knife there must be either a musat,
or a pebble, or at least a bowl with such a smooth bottom.
The knife is constantly straightened about him, and he cuts again like new.
Have you seen?
Onion. Here I have two onions.
I'll cut 1.5 heads into 3-4 mm cubes, that's enough.
Maybe a little larger than I would cut for kebabs,
maybe a little larger than I would cut for manti or samsa.
And we will cut the remaining half into rather thin half rings.
I will explain later what this is for.
Since mastava is a soup, not pilaf, then the number of ingredients that
are put on pilaf must be divided by two.
For fried soups, carrots are usually cut into fairly large cubes,
because when fried, the meat
will be about the same size as a carrot cube.
Garlic, tomatoes, potatoes will have time to do near the cauldron,
but the first step is to properly melt the fat tail.
To correctly and competently melt fat tail fat, there is also a secret here.
When I was very young, I also strongly warmed up the cauldron,
put a fat tail in it, and the fat tail in my cauldron was practically fried.
Now I have grown a little wiser, and I act differently.
You see, I deliberately poured some water, rinsed the cauldron
and thereby cooled the cauldron a little.
Now the temperature of the cauldron is about 100C.
I put bacon in the cauldron, but it does not hiss.
Let the bacon lie on a low heat,
warm neatly, melt neatly,
but let it in no case turn black.
It will be much tastier this way. See what kind of fat tail has become?
It is already golden below, and transparent on top.
It's time to turn it over.
That's all. And the fry remains white, light,
very dry and almost as tasty.
I know what some of the guys are going to think about now.
They will think that this thinly sliced ​​onion, this salt,
and then everything, as it is written in the book.
Guys, mastava is a homemade dish.
This is not pilaf, which is prepared in teahouses,
which is prepared in men's companies.
And there, these 50 g may be quite appropriate. Well, why?
As a matter of fact, you can have a snack, but you don't have to.
Moreover, you are at home, in a home atmosphere.
I saw families where sons, my peers, do not drink in front of their parents.
I have seen families where children, adolescents, students, stand up
and listen to their elders addressing them.
It is no coincidence that I have just told you all this philosophy.
I had time. I needed this time in order
for the fat in the cauldron to warm up properly.
Now it has warmed up well.
And now he is ready to take in both meat and onions,
and so that you are all fried properly.
We lay both meat and onions at the same time.
A unique case. Not meat forward, not onion forward, but onion along with meat.
Perhaps, it is necessary to throw some firewood.
Now the flame is licking the whole cauldron.
It boils only from below, but these parts of the cauldron, the
walls of the cauldron, heat up properly.
And when I put meat and onions in there, everything boils very quickly.
And I kind of collect heat from all over the cauldron.
You see, not only from its bottom, but from the whole cauldron.
With frequent stirring, we fry everything until the
juice starts to turn red.
That's how it is now, such a golden red delicious color.
I sprinkle with pepper, and I salt the meat and onions,
those products, the taste of which I need to highlight in the finished dish.
Look what happened now. Juices were released from the meat.
And these juices, due to the fact that I was constantly stirring,
they did not settle on the cauldron, but they settled back on the meat.
Now the meat looks like varnished. It glitters.
But now is the time for the carrots, add all the carrots.
You see, those logs are burned out, the fire is already decreasing.
During this time, the carrot has become, as it were, varnished.
You know, not everyone is cooked with fresh tomatoes.
If not in season, then in Uzbekistan they can also use tomato paste.
And so tomato paste should be put in right now.
I want to get the result that is softer,
more comfortable, more dietary.
And look, it is no coincidence that I pour it to the walls,
where I have formed some carbon deposits, and go after it with a slotted spoon.
For what? I need to pick up this soot, as the cooks say.
I need to kind of dissolve it in the broth
that we now get.
If you cook for 0.5 kg of meat, it will take about 2 liters of water.
Rice will need to take 200 g, no more.
But I cook from a whole kilogram of meat,
so I took 4 liters of water, and 400 g of rice. It
’s boiling. See what color the broth is.
In European cuisine, such broths,
made from baked meat, from semi-fried meat,
are called red broths.
And in fact, they give a red tint.
Now is the time to think about bookmarking other products.
Rice and potatoes are starchy foods,
so you first need to tone down the acidity that is common in tomatoes.
Look, I omit the tomatoes all at once.
The taste of finished tomatoes should appear.
Previously, there were no tomatoes or potatoes in Uzbekistan,
and they were acidified with some other fruits.
Perhaps some fruits such as plums, such as apricots, are quite sour.
And instead of potatoes, they laid turnips.
And now, too, many people prefer to combine turnips and potatoes.
Turnips, of course, need to be put in advance,
because turnips take much longer to cook.
Also, note that if you cook transparent soups,
for example, such as shurpa or any European broths,
then in no case should it boil in a cauldron or a saucepan
as violently as it is boiling in our country now.
But we are now making a grilled soup.
Previously, this kind of soups, both in Central Asia and in Azerbaijan,
were prepared precisely from kaurma,
that is, from fried meat prepared for future use.
And such a soup cannot be transparent.
In addition, a fairly large amount of fat is added to this soup.
So it is customary, such soups should be very satisfying.
If you boil slowly and carefully,
then all the fat will collect on the surface.
And this is not what we want.
We need to soak carrots, potatoes
and even the rice that we put into this cauldron after a few minutes with these fats .
The time to add the garlic and pepper is highly dependent on the
flavor you want to get.
If you want the garlic to bite harder, put it down later.
If you want the smell of pepper to be more,
firstly, you can put not one pepper, but two, and in advance.
I put everything together at the same time.
This suits my personal taste.
And when you cook for yourself, you must take this into account.
And now one more trick. This is found only in Uzbek cuisine.
There was already onion, but that was fried onion,
and now you need to put fresh onion, thinly sliced
for some pungency and spice of the dish.
Do you see how much soup you made?
There was 1 kg of meat, there were 400 g of carrots, there were 400 g of potatoes, there was
onion, how much water there was, and we take half a dryer of rice.
30-40 g of rice per 100 g of meat.
30 g of rice is practically per serving for one person.
That is, what we have prepared here is
enough for 10 or 12 people to eat well.
It remains to prepare a small sauce for the mastava.
Here I have 3 cloves of garlic, and this is a glass of good thick yogurt
, what is called katyk in Uzbekistan.
If you have any kind of yogurt, then add good sour cream to it.
You will get what you need. Look, a regular garlic press.
Here is literally a pinch of salt.
We put yogurt in a bowl, stir, and you're done.
In Uzbekistan, greens are always served with almost all soups.
Sometimes thinly chopped onions are served again.
Well, and for this kind of filling soups, they certainly give some kind of hot spices
, what is called "laojan".
Often they are made from garlic, red pepper, a
little vegetable oil, and here I have the usual homemade adjika.
But nevertheless, I'm sure it will fit just fine.
While they were talking, everything is ready.
This is what it means to optimize processes in the kitchen.
We impose. First, let's put something thick.
Now a little thin. I got a clove of garlic.
Well, how to get around garlic. We must look for meat.
And now, of course, the greens.
And now, of course, the same sauce from katyk, from yogurt, from sour cream.
In about the same way as we lay sour cream.
No need to stir. Do you know how to eat?
We must take a spoonful of hot,
but let this sour cream stand alone as a cold lump.
And from there, pinch off a little, and so that it mixes already in the mouth.
A little spicy on top of the sour cream.
I can only wish you great success in work,
good health, the creation of strong and friendly families.
And, of course, bon appetit!