Local Dishes

1. Palaw

   Palaw (rice pilaf with meat and carrot)

   Usage

   It is defined as meat fried in oil, topped with chopped onion and carrot, covered with water and cooked with rice. It is the outstanding rice dish; each tribe cooks it differently, and on the Caspian coast a version is made with fish instead of meat. Named variants include toý palawy for feasts, gök tüwili palaw with young rice and mäşli palaw with mung beans. Note the spelling is palaw, not palow

2. Dograma

   Dograma (torn bread and meat soaked in broth)

   Usage

   It is defined as bread and meat chopped and mixed, then covered with çorba. It is the most honoured dish at memorial meals (sadaka) and weddings, and is traced to sarida, glossed by the translators of at-Tabari as chopped bread and shredded meat under poured broth, in a passage on Merv and Sarahs in the mid-8th century, making the dish some 1,250 years old

3. Çekdirme

   Çekdirme (fresh meat braised in a little water)

   Usage

   It is defined as a dish made from fresh meat with only a little water added. It is a traditional dish of more than a thousand years, made with rice, meat, tomato paste, onion, oil and water. It is far less soupy than a European stew

4. Gaýnatma

   Gaýnatma (boiled meat broth dish)

   Usage

   It is defined as a liquid dish made by boiling meat. Its example sentence lists it beside çekdirme on the table, and the pair works as a contrast: çekdirme uses little water, gaýnatma is the boiled, brothy one

   Grammar Note

   gaýnat- (to boil, the causative of gaýna- "to come to a boil") plus the verbal-noun suffix -ma. Many Turkmen dish names are built this way: dogra- gives dograma, gatla- gives gatlama, gowur- gives gowurma

5. Gowurma

   Gowurma (meat cut small and fried in fat)

   Usage

   It is defined as finely chopped meat fried in fat and served as it is. Its example puts a bowl of gowurma in front of guests beside petir bread straight out of the tamdyr, which is the standard pairing. Kept under its own fat it also works as a way of preserving meat, a legacy of herding life

6. Çişlik

   Çişlik (skewered grilled meat)

   Usage

   It is defined as meat threaded on a skewer and held over embers. Rather than the Russian-derived şaşlyk, this is the word to order with. Gapyrga çişligi: mutton ribs marinated six to eight hours in pomegranate juice with bay leaf, then grilled over saxaul (sazak) embers

7. Kebap

   Kebap (meat cooked over fire)

   Usage

   It is defined as thin-sliced meat cooked over fire, a synonym of çişlik. There are Aşgabat kebaby, mutton leg minced with onion, fried in butter on a griddle and finished steaming over onions, and heýkelli kebap, minced meat bound with egg, shaped 8-10 cm along a skewer and grilled over embers, both served with chopped spring onion, dill and tamdyr bread

8. Kakmaç

   Kakmaç (meat cut in thin slices)

   Usage

   It is defined as thin-sliced meat, or a large-cut piece of meat, with kakmaç bişirmek (to cook kakmaç) as an example. The word also appears inside the definition of kebap, "otda bişirilen kakmaç et". Note that English sources sometimes describe it as meat dried in the desert sun; the Turkmen definition carries no such element

9. Tamdyrlama

   Tamdyrlama (a whole animal cooked in the tamdyr)

   Usage

   "Tamdyrlamalar" is a method of hanging a whole lamb (tokly, guzy), kid (çebiş, owlak) or bird (towuk, juýje, gaz, ördek) in a tamdyr, the clay oven, and cooking it in its own steam. The mouth and vents are sealed with clay and the animal cooks for 75-90 minutes; the juices that drip into a pot below become a çorba served alongside. Tamdyr is a clay oven built for baking bread

10. Unaş

    Unaş (hand-cut noodle dish)

    Usage

    It is defined as dough rolled thin and cut into long strips, and the dish made from it. It comes in a milk version and one with beans. A folk tale has a man "unaş içip", drinking unaş at a mullah's house: because it is a soup, Turkmen can take içmek (to drink) rather than iýmek (to eat) with it

11. Şüle

    Şüle (a soupier rice dish than palaw)

    Usage

    It is defined by contrast: rice cooked wetter than palaw. That contrast is part of the definition itself, which makes it easy to explain what you are ordering. It is also counted among the easily digested foods given to someone recovering from illness

12. Ýarma

    Ýarma (cracked-grain porridge)

    Usage

    Two senses: coarsely milled grain such as wheat or sorghum, and the thick dish boiled from it. Its examples have women going off to mill ýarma and a mother cooking ýarma for her children. In the old days grain was crushed in a hand mill (owguç) or mortar (soky) to make it

13. Köje

    Köje (a dish of cracked sorghum)

    Usage

    It is defined as a dish boiled from cracked jöwen, sorghum. There is the proverb "Parh bilmeze ýarma-da bir köje-de", to someone who cannot tell the difference ýarma and köje are the same, and "Ýetim aşy - ýarma köje", the orphan's meal is ýarma and köje. The examples themselves mark it as humble food

14. Süýtlaş

    Süýtlaş (a dish cooked in milk)

    Usage

    A dish cooked in süýt, milk. It is a sweet milk-and-vermicelli dish traditionally served at weddings, also called süýtli unaş or süýtli aş. Ask what is actually in it

15. Içlekli

    Içlekli (meat-filled baked bread)

    Usage

    It is defined as a meat bread baked with pounded meat and gowurdak inside. Watch the spelling: the standard form is içlekli, built on iç "inside", but işlekli is also written, so you will meet that spelling on signs and menus too

    Grammar Note

    iç (inside) plus -lek plus the possessive -li (having). This is the same suffix as in etli çörek (meat bread) and soganly çörek (onion bread), and it pairs with the privative -syz/-siz (without). Note that the privative has only two shapes in Turkmen, with no rounding harmony

16. Gutap

    Gutap (a filled half-moon pasty)

    Usage

    It is defined as bread baked with meat, vegetables or herbs inside, with "içi gökli gutap", a gutap filled with greens, as its example. It derives from Classical Persian قُطَّاب and is a flat semi-circular pasty, filled and then fried or oven-baked. Spinach is the classic filling

    Grammar Note

    A final voiceless consonant becomes voiced before a vowel-initial suffix: gutap becomes gutaby. The same applies to kebap - kebaby and çelpek - çelpegi

17. Somsa

    Somsa (a filled pasty baked in the tamdyr)

    Usage

    It is defined as a gutap filled with minced meat, onion or pumpkin and baked in a tamdyr or on a hearth: in other words somsa is a kind of gutap. Its example has a cook setting out to bake gökli somsa, somsa with greens

18. Börek

    Börek (filled dough boiled in water)

    Usage

    It is defined as rolled and cut dough filled with meat, egg or vegetables and then boiled. Note the contrast with Turkish börek, which is baked: the Turkmen dish is boiled, and the example sentence has someone folding börek in the morning. There is also a second, botanical börek, a soft-stemmed plant with leaves like a grapevine

19. Manty

    Manty (steamed dumplings)

    Usage

    It is defined as a dish cooked in steam and made larger than börek: the difference from börek, in both size and method, is written into the definition. The filling is minced meat with onion, or pumpkin

20. Petir

    Petir (unleavened bread)

    Usage

    It is defined as bread kneaded without yeast, not left to rise, and docked before baking. It is baked the same way as külçe. An example sentence serves it alongside gowurma

21. Külçe

    Külçe (a round milk-dough loaf)

    Usage

    It is defined as a round köke, a biscuit-like loaf, made with oil, egg and sugar and kneaded with milk. A stiff yeastless dough is rolled round, baked in the tamdyr and brushed with hot fat as it comes out. It is slightly sweet, so it also works at breakfast or with tea

22. Gatlama

    Gatlama (layered pan-fried flatbread)

    Usage

    Method: an unleavened dough of flour, water and salt rests 30-40 minutes, is rolled into thin sheets, brushed with oil and folded, divided into 100-150 g pieces, rolled again to 1.5-2 cm and browned on both sides on a griddle or in a small pan. The oiling and rolling may be repeated to get more layers, and sugar is scattered over it while hot

23. Çelpek

    Çelpek (thin dough fried in oil)

    Usage

    It is defined as dough rolled thin and fried in oil, similar to gatlama. It corresponds to shelpek, a Central Asian flatbread. There is also the idiom çelpek syrmak, snatching a çelpek straight out of the pan as part of a celebration custom

24. Çapady

    Çapady (a thick round pan-fried bread)

    Usage

    It is defined as dough rolled round and thin and fried in oil, similar to byzmyk. The method dissolves yeast in warm water, adds flour and salt, rests the dough 1-1.5 hours, rolls it 0.8-1.0 cm thick and 15-20 cm across, browns both sides and serves it hot, with gaýmak (clotted cream) and butter on the side and sugar to taste

25. Gowurdakly çörek

    Gowurdakly çörek (meat-stuffed bread baked in the tamdyr)

    Usage

    Method: a stiff dough of flour, yeast, water and salt; separately, boneless mutton put through a coarse mincer, salted and peppered, then fried with chopped onion. Two sheets of dough are used, the lower slightly thicker, the meat laid on and covered, the edges folded and the top pricked in several places, then baked in the tamdyr and brushed with butter

26. Soganly çörek

    Soganly çörek (bread with onion and cracklings)

    Usage

    It is also called Jigirdekli çörek. Chopped jigirdek (cracklings) and finely cut onion are worked into a flour, yeast, water and salt dough just before shaping; the loaves are formed long and more chopped onion is scattered on top before baking. Three kilos of flour take a cupful of cracklings and four or five onions

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