Kyrgyz family dinnerparties

During my stay in Bishkek I had the amazing pleasure of attending not only one but a multiple of Kyrgyzstan parties. (Thank you my lovely host family! You are the best.) Here I will describe my first party where we ate one whole sheep. And I mean the whole sheep, every single part.

The parties have a certain distinguishable structure. Firstly, drinking tea and eating the first serving of salads, breads and first courses and of course a lot of conversation. The main dish is brought out later as the final culmination of the party. Then there are toasts to wish the family good things and to thank them for the party.  At the end there is operation pocket.

Firstly I was amazed at the amount and variety of different types of food. Salads, chicken, bread, the traditional bread borsok, sweets, fruits.. I was actually full even before they brought in the main course; mutton Beshbarmak. With it everyone was served mutton with big bones and given a knife to carve out the meat. The name means "five fingers" after it being traditionally eaten with hands. My family had aquired a one whole sheep for the party and later as I wandered into the kitchen I found what was left of the sheep.

Towards the end of the party, after the Besbarmak, it was the honorary duty of the oldest grandfather to carve the meat out of the mutton head and eat it. Everybody got a taste in the end. There was all sorts of sheep parts going around and the polite (and interesting) thing to do was to taste a little bit of everything. After the party there is a thing called "operation pocket". There is simply so much food in kyrgyz parties that it is impossible to finish it all. Therefore all the quests get a takeaway collection of party food with them to home. No food wasted and no need to cook the next day!

I was really impressed by the scale of Kyrgyz parties. A lot of time, effort and money is invested to a party. Family gatherings are really important occasions and I consider myself really lucky to have been invited to not only one but multiple parties during my stay in Kyrgyzstan.  Actually for the final family party we were invited to (before going back to Finland), I made a traditional Finnish dish; carelian pies. My host family and their relatives actually really enjoyed my carelian pies. As by some miracle I managed to do really delicious carelian pies to represent Finland even though my last experience of making them was before high school... I just googled "how to bake carelian pies" and managed to do it.