#154 Turkmenistan: melons!

 

I can’t claim to know much about Turkmenistan, but here’s one thing that makes me love the country immediately: Turkmenistan officially celebrates National Melon Day on the second Sunday of August. It’s actually a major national holiday, sanctioned by the government.

You might think that this is some sort of political slogan, but in Turkmenistan, it’s actually somewhat true: there’s a melon on every table. At every meal. Including this one:

 

I’m a little bit obsessed with melons, apparently — even when I’m asleep. After gaining 20 pounds (I’ve eaten food from more than 150 countries, cut me some slack!), I briefly went on a low-carb diet – and dreamed of melons several nights in a row. I am not making this up. (And no, it’s not a metaphor, either.)

But as much as I love melons, I get even more excited about a fantastic conversation with a warm Turkmen family – especially if it involves a home-cooked meal.

 

When I arrived at the home of the Notomelette family on a beautiful Saturday afternoon – accompanied by a wonderful filmmaker from NYC Media – our hosts were ready for us: the dining room table was already covered with homemade dough, the precursors to some homemade beef and pumpkin manti:

 

Our gracious Turkmen hosts — Tylla, Serdar, and their son, Dovlet — then demonstrated the entire process of making the manti. A video version is hopefully on its way to a television near you, but here’s the pictorial version:

 

And yes, the manti were every bit as amazing as they look. You really can’t beat fresh, hand-sized beef-and-pumpkin dumplings, straight out of the steamer — especially when they’re topped with a little bit of melted sour cream, and served with a pair of traditional Turkmen salads. Our meal featured a classic shepherd’s salad, and a garlicky beet salad with sour cream:

 

And the Notomelettes were just getting warmed up. They also prepared plov, another thoroughly lovable Turkmen staple, featuring blissfully chewy steamed rice, cooked with beef, carrots, onions, and a whole bulb of garlic to give the dish some extra flavor:

 

The Notomelettes also explained that no Turkmen meal is complete without a nice loaf of chorek — a round bread made in a clay oven, called a tamder. You might notice the resemblance to a few other Central Asian breads: lepeshka, widely featured in Bukharian Jewish restaurants in NYC, or Armenian choreg – which is shaped similarly, but tastes more like a lightly sweetened coffee cake.

Anyway, this chorek came straight from the motherland itself, brought back from Tylla’s recent trip home to Turkmenistan. The Notomelettes insisted that the chorek is better when it’s fresh, but it was still awfully tasty, with a distinctively crispy exterior and a nice, soft interior.

 

And of course, a plate of fresh melon was lurking during the entire meal, patiently waiting its turn behind the plov:

 

By the time we munched our way through the melon and snapped a few more photos, we’d been in the Notomelettes’ home for about five hours — which gave us time to learn TONS about Turkmenistan and the nation’s culinary culture. A quick sampling of my favorite tidbits:

• According to legend, Turkmens kept their boots shiny by eating roasted lamb with their hands – and then wiping their fat-smeared fingers on their leather boots to give them a nice, supple sheen.
• Testosterone poisoning is a real thing. Manti and plov are often made with lamb in Turkmenistan, but when the Notomelettes arrived in the U.S., they felt that the lamb tasted worse than back home – but inconsistently so, maybe half of the time. Apparently, the bad-tasting meat comes from un-castrated male lambs. So this is no surprise to any woman who’s ever dated me, but testosterone can apparently be a very, very bad thing.
• In their years in the U.S., the Notomelettes have tried literally dozens of varieties of rice, but none of them have the same chewy, sticky consistency of the rice back home in Turkmenistan. Interestingly, the same is true of carrots: the American varieties taste more or less the same as the ones back home, but the Notomelettes noticed that cooked American carrots fall apart much faster than their Turkmen counterparts — and they’ve tried dozens of varieties in their plov since arriving in NYC.

And in case you’re wondering how, exactly, I weaseled my way into a meal at the Notomelettes’ home, here’s the story: through the internet grapevine, I heard about a Baruch graduate student named Dovlet who had produced video of people saying “Happy New Year from New York!” in 100 different languages. His follow-ups have included videos of 100 people saying “I love you” and explaining what they’re thankful for in 100 different languages. And, well, New York dudes with quixotic international quests need to stick together.

So if you see this guy, talk to him in whatever language you speak – and good things will probably happen.

 

Huge thanks to Dovlet Notomelette and his parents, Tylla and Serdar, for graciously inviting us into their home and allowing us to film them until they wanted to toss us out the window. Huge thanks also to the always-wonderful Andrew Guidone for providing much better camera work than I could ever dream of.