Uzbek Lagman Recipe

Uzbek Lagman Recipe

This is the dish, if one were stuck on a desert island, that my husband and I might just possibly want to have because it’s just so flavorful and satisfying. And did I mention it tastes delicious? This is also the dish with which you can wow even your most gourmet French cooking chef friend!

Meat and vegetable stew over noodles is the basic premise. (Paleo and Gluten Free people, please keep reading!) But add all the spices and fresh herbs and you’ve got yourself a sensational dish!

I first had this dish as a soup version at the dark little Otrar hotel in Almaty, Kazakhstan in early 1994, and I was deeply impressed (or else just startving!) My most recent encounters with the dish have been in Moscow at the chain of restaurants that does it best: Chaixona No. 1 – pronounced “Chigh-HON-a NO-mer a-DEEN.” It’s a mouthful, and so is the dish!)

 

To prepare this dish, you must be ready to put in a bit of chopping time as well as have a cupboard full of spices you may not have heard of or used yet. Recruit some sous-chefs in the house, if possible, or else put on a good podcast. I recommend Underground Wellness podcasts if you are into learning about health and nutrition. Sometimes I get my elder daughter to peel garlic cloves, because that alone seems to take half of my prep time. In fact, I have her peel an entire bulb and I save the unused for future meals in an hermetically sealed glass jar! They keep for many days, no harm done, only time saved and then you will be more likely to cook something with healthful garlic!

Here are the ingredients:

1 kg lamb (mutton, veal or beef can also be used)

2 big fat carrots

1 onion

5-7 cloves garlic minced

1 shallot

Nigella and/or kala jeera

2 whote star anise pieces

Salt to taste 2 bay leaves

1 can of peeled tomatoes chooped

Tablespoon of ginger

2 big yellow bell peppers

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

4 cloves

1 ½  tsp whole cumin seed

3 dashes of turmeric for good measure

Black pepper

Dash of nutmeg

Half a cup to 4-5 cups water, depending on how soupy you want it)

Fresh chopped cilantro on top

Fleur de sel on top

Optional: Omelette or Scrambled Egg (1 per person), sliced

Other things you can add:celery, radish, chives, leek, scallions, dried hot red chili pepper, chinese cabbade, zucchini, eggplant, parsley, cilantro, spice: black cumin “zeera”

dried crushed red pepper, dash of coriander, bits of celery

The Process:

Chop everything into bite size pieces, except garlic which can be minced

Heat pan

Add fat in pan (butter, ghee, coconut oil, duck fat, etc. – no vegetable oils, please! These plastic resembling oils are verboten, banish them from your kitchen!)

Add the meat to sear it until light brown

Add spices

Cover to keep juices in

Add garlic, onion, ginger then carrot, pepper

Add tomatoes

Cover and let simmer until vegetables are cooked to your desired taste (10-45 mins), during which time you can also add the water if you’d like it to be brothier. I add a few tablespoons of water to have a little sauce. I also like to keep my veggies more “cru” – uncooked, so I turn off the stove once the meat is cooked through and well mixed with the veggies, as opposed to letting the vegetable cook until they are limp.

While the meat has been cooking I will be preparing the noodles. If you are Gluten Free, which I am “trying” to adjust to in my own nutritional approach, then you can also eat this dish with rice of all kinds if you don’t/can’t eat noodles. To make this more Paleo, just take out the grain side dish entirely. Paleo experts probably have many suggestions as to replacements for the noodles other than rice, such as possibly spaghetti squash, or other things, depending on the season.

The crowining topping, if you have the time and patience after all that chopping and mixing, is to scramble eggs or make a plain omelette, one egg per person, and slice into thin slices to garnish the top along with piles of cut parsley and/or cilantro! (You can easily skip the egg if you are eating an egg-free diet!)

Voilà! You now can say you can cook a real dish from Central Asia!

Bon Appetit!

Decadethlon – IronMom: The Next Five Years

In 2008, once I realized I was pregnant, I had to drop the soccer, but I still kept my workouts in the 20-30% range average of days worked out. In August I managed to work out eight out of the 23 days prior to my second c-section and was even equipped with Japanese birthing and newborn diapering terminology prior to entering the first-rate Sanno hospital in Tokyo. September saw zero workouts and just as few hours of sleep. On the bright side, however, for the first time since college, I accomplished hours upon hours of night reading and read the biggest books I’ve ever read in my life. Motherhood had made me literate again. 95 out of 366 days worked out, or 26%. Best month, January at 45%. Worst month, September 0% (an all-time low.)

2009 was neither a particularly productive nor lazy year, at an average annual rate of 35% days worked out. It was, however, an emotional one, as we left our beloved Tokyo for a move to Moscow via the US for six weeks of homeless home leave with two children, two cats, two car seats, 8 suitcases and 6 carry on bags. While nursing an infant at the same time as raising a toddler might on the surface sound like an anti-fitness-inducing formula, it is actually the act of moving house that robs one of one’s fitness routine or even the interest to maintain one. Early on, it was back to the no-impact yoga, pilates and swimming. By November my monthly workouts increased a bit to 40% as we settled into our new life in Moscow, for a second round of winters.

Despite a continuing breastfeeding schedule throughout 2010, with the help of an overly-dominating Russian nanny, I was still able to maintain a fairly high workout rate, averaging 54%, or 196 out of 365 days. Motherhood had made me more efficient with my time.

In 2011, I participated in my first Ironman Triathlon in Moscow. (Okay, let’s qualify this: It was all indoors and conducted over two weeks’ time. But I still finished, got my medal and learned to love the stationary recumbant bike!) This became my second best year, with a 62% average over the year of days worked out, or 228 days out of 366, and I was still nursing for the first four or five months of it. Taking up Tae Kwon Do with preschoolers also helped add to the workout numbers, as did joining an adult Tae Kwon Do class and earning my yellow belt, which had served as an incentive to make it to class. The shared pain of taking a Tae Kwon Do class together creates a kind of fitness-hood among fellow suffering classmates. (See my TKD blog entry on this below entitled “The No-Belt Prize for Piece.”)

In 2012, I embarked on my second indoor, two-week Ironman Triathlon and finished despite daily doubts even up to the last day of it and having a cold in the middle. Facial biopsy, followed by facial surgery, followed by a staggering three-week flu kept me from the gym during the first third of the year, as did some summer travel. In the fall, however, I began working towards my orange belt in Tae Kwon Do and preparing for a TKD exhibition tournament. In the end, I managed to have an annual average workout rate of 63%, tying with 2004 for the best year in numbers of workouts! (May, a travel month, at the low end at 35% and November, TKD preparation month, at the high end at a whopping 87%, but not without a high price: foot tendonitis from overtraining! )

And now, the graphs (you'll need a microscope)...

More next time in the Conclusion (finally!!) of Decadethlon – Lessons Learned (ie. Underperforming vs. Overtraining, The Ultimate Orange Crush, and How Chocolate, Fashion Magazines and TV Contribute to a Healthy Workout Schedule)

Decadethlon – What Goes Down Must Come Up

Preface: As I said before, I’m a pencil-and-paper kind of person, still, and, for me, figuring out how to import excel charts into the blogosphere and make them look right is like sculpting ice with a feather. Will work on this. Maybe a better feather?

After an all-time annual low in numbers of workouts in 2002, my track record, so to speak, improved by 2004 to workout rate of about two out of three days. In fact, to date, it has been my “most fit year” in number of days worked out, despite a move from Paris back to Washington, DC, and bunion surgery to both feet (that’s what commuting in dress shoes in the Paris metro will do to you!) Thanks to the foot surgery, I discovered the magic of pilates: you can be flat on your back and still get a workout in! I let the Tour de France and Lance Armstrong (obviously pre-drug admission) inspire me during the weeks after my surgery. With still sore feet, I moved with my husband to Moscow in September. US Embassy Moscow had a more extensive gym, indoor pool and indoor basketball court. Indoor is the key word here, as it seems most of the year it’s winter in Moscow. I made use of the indoor facilities and agreed (only once or twice) to run with my husband outside during good weather. Days Worked Out: 231 out of 366 (a leap year) or 63%. Best month: September, 29 out of 30 days, or a whopping 97%! And that only 6 weeks after bunion surgery. (When you can’t walk, then watching and mimicking pilates videos is pretty much all you can do besides eat all day, anyway.) Thank you, Pilates! Worst months: May and December, tying the score at 14 out of 31 days, or 45%. Not so bad.

The year 2005 saw 217 out of 365 days of workouts, my third best year in terms of days worked out, despite the fact that I spent most of that year pregnant.  Conclusion: Pregnancy is good for staying fit! I also worked, a lot. I billed myself out as a photographer, shooting portraits and events and hit the elliptical machine, good for no-impact workouts. A “Yoga for Pregnancy” video was my new best friend. I had my husband film me – the 45 extra pounds of protruding belly, double chin, and all - on the elliptical machine the December night before my scheduled c-section, so there’s proof! I was more in fear of the IV going into my hand than the c-section into my abdomen. The last few exhausting days of that year were spent learning how to nurse a wonderful, wrinkly, squawking chicken-legged newborn. Days Worked Out: 217 out of 365, or 59%. Best month: July, 26 out of 31 days, or 59%. Worst month: December. 6 out of 31 days, or 19%.

2006 was another once-in-three-or-four-days years. I even recorded five and seven workouts for the months of January and February, respectively, despite healing from the fresh c-section slice and going on virtually no sleep, while also entertaining loads of visiting friends and relatives who wanted to see the baby. At six weeks old our newborn flew with us to wintery Moscow, where we returned to a freezing apartment, all three of us wearing ski caps indoors.  Unbelievably, neither the nights of little sleep nor the whistling Moscow winds kept me from dragging myself to the gym every few days, in between breastfeedings and naps. Instead, a workout meant a bit of freedom and independence for me, both rare commodities for mothers with newborns. In the summer, we moved back to Washington, DC to take a 6-week fast-track Japanese course in preparation for our impending move to Tokyo. Now I juggled nursing with Japanese flash cards. My “45% days worked out” in July dropped to the 20% range for the rest of the year as we moved to Tokyo with our 8 month old and got used to our surroundings in this exotic and exciting East Asian city. Days Worked Out: 116 out of 365, or 32%. Best month: December, 18 out of 31 days, or 58%. Worst month: January, 5 out of 31 days, or 16%.

The year 2007 in Tokyo I recorded an annual average of 47% of days worked out (171 out of 365 days), which translates to about an average year for the decade, not great, not bad. I finished up nursing after the first half of the year, took up soccer in the summer and became resonably fit for a glorious but brief six months before becoming pregnant again. Best month: September. 19 out of 30 days, or 63%. Worst month: August, 9 out of 31 days, or 29%.

Next up: The Year’s Five-Second Stretch, no, I mean The Second Five-Year Stretch, and the decade’s table (if I can figure out how to do it!)

The Momminator

It was a perfect storm of events: My husband was away on business, the baby hadn’t napped or eaten dinner, and Arnold Schwarzenegger was coming to the US Embassy in Moscow to speak. Like almost everyone else I know, I have been a fan of his since childhood, more for his bodybuilding than his gunslinging, I dare say.

I had been asked to take photographs for the event and then not to and then again to and then not to, until I figured I might as well have my camera and the girls with me, in case I could either shoot the event or have them both be in the shot. In the end, neither of these things happened. Well, they sort of didn’t happen.

Thanks to Moscow traffic, the Governor’s motorcade was delayed and the dinnertime hour came and went while we waited for him. Everyone was waiting and practicing for a group shot of California constituents. I even had time to run home from the event and grab some crackers and milk for the girls, while an equally anxious Mom watched them.

By the time the Governor arrived, the baby was loopy, had wet her pants (I still don’t know if it was milk or urine, but it looked to everyone else like the latter), and was being laughed at by all the kids, including my toddler, who, nevertheless, thankfully stayed seated with the rest of the group for the photo.

Seconds after the Governor’s handler told me I should join the group shot instead of take the picture myself (the Governor had his own photographer with him), the Governor strode up and took his place among the group of California constituents. I was, perhaps, on the edge of the shot, on the floor, actually, grabbing the flailing arms and legs of my screaming two year old and thereby giving up the millisecond opportunity of being in a photo with Arnold Schwarzenegger. As a Mom, these are the choices you make. The photographer took two or three shots and then the Governor and his handlers moved on to the stairs and stage below. I was wearing the true colors of motherhood of milk and urine on my dress, as I gathered up our sippy cups, stuffed bear and my camera to join the rest of the awaiting crowd below.

The Governor made kind remarks, thanking us all for our service to the Government and noting how much he enjoyed the fact that most of us remember him as The Terminator, as opposed to The Predator, or other such titles given him over his career. A resounding cheer came from the crowd when he said the words, “I’ll be back!”

In the end, I got to shake Arnold Schwarzenegger’s hand, or rather, he shook mine. I said to him in a barely audible voice, “Gutentag!”

And to think that just an hour or two before, I had been at home, scooping cat litter, chasing down a diaperless baby, and wiping the baby’s urine off the carpet. All in a Mom’s day’s work. Mom Voyage!