Thanksgiving in Mongolia was suprisingly like Thanksgiving in America, though not without considerable effort. First, there was the matter of the turkey. Not a common sight here, but the embassy staff receives a special shipment of over 1000 turkeys in mid-November. This year, unfortunately, they didn’t arrive, due to some ill-timed bad weather.
But, Thanksgiving isn’t the same without the turkey, so a good friend rallied his resources and managed to get his hands on one, raised by a farmer in the far east of the country. Apparently, this lucky soul only had 10, and the US embassy suggested to him that now would be an opportune time to sell them. So he did, and $98 later, our 3.4 kilo crowning jewel arrived.
The rest of the ingredients proved easy enough to find, except perhaps sweet potatoes. Yams were possible, but this year Thanksgiving fell on the same day as Mongolia’s constitutional independence, and as a national holiday, the markets were closed (though some stores remained open). So no yams either, but potatoes, beans, corn, carrots, bread for stuffing, pumpkin, and all sorts of other goodies were procured in advance. The night before, we set to cooking, producing pie, ricotta cheesecake, and the foundations of several other dishes besides.
The day of, vegetables were chopped, and the bird soaked in a pot of salt water. 3.4 kilos is nothing spectacular, and the only indication that we had a turkey was its long neck. When you are used to American butchering of fowl, the sight of the long neck and the cavity on the other side is a bit disconcerting. After several minutes of grossing ourselves out, we managed to marinate the bird and put it in the oven (where it barely fit – 3.4 kilos was perhaps the perfect size).
Because two of us live in the same building, we managed to move chairs and a table from one apartment to another, so that we were able to squeeze 12 people around one table. Everything else was prepared, and an extra chicken obtained just in case.
All told, we had the turkey and chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, roasted carrots and leeks, sauteed spinach and mushrooms, savory zucchini ricotta cheesecake, apple-walnut stuffing, sesame green beans, rolls, pumpkin bread, a hearty salad, pumpkin pie, chocolate pecan pie, strawberry cake, ice cream, and even fresh mongolian cream. And, at the 11th hour, as we lamented for the 10th time that we would have no cranberry sauce, a friend walked in with a bag of hawthorn (or perhaps goji) berries – small, bright red, and most important, tart. So we boiled them in a sugar syrup, added orange rind and juice, and made the best approximation of cranberry sauce that we could have manged. Dinner was complete.
food and culture
Published April 21, 2009 Uncategorized 2 CommentsTags: food, social commentary
Before coming to Mongolia, I was a vegetarian, though I did eat meat on the rare occaison. A few months before leaving the US, I reincorporated meat back into my diet, which wasn’t the easiest thing to try.
But I’m glad I did, because meat is pervasive here. It’s in just about everything, and particularly, in the countryside, forms the backbone of the diet.
Interestingly, though, it’s not the centerpiece of the Mongolian diet, except perhaps during certain times of the year. But while meat is an essential part of the diet, one thing I have noticed is that it’s not necessarily the largest portion of a meal.
For example, people don’t just eat big chunks of meat. They don’t eat steaks or hamburgers. In the winter months, they might eat hunks of hot fat, but this is not a typical daily dish. Instead, Mongolians eat dumplings, or noodles. The noodles in particular, tend to contain carrot and potato and maybe even cabbage (or, when I’m lucky, peppers).
In a sense, meat is a fringe food in the urban diet, and at times, in the rural diet as well. This is, of course, what we see in so much of the rest of the world – the heavy dependence on basic carbs (wheat and rice), and the addition of vegetables and meat as “flavoring”.
Sadly, there isn’t much more to the Mongolian diet than this – meat, flour, milk, and potatoes and carrots. Of course, with the warmer weather, I can find all sorts of other things (garlic scape and bock choy for example). But it’s an interesting experience introducing Mongolians to these other items and expanding the diet. I’ve heard some funny stories from friends about trying to make spaghetti (would have been better without tomato sauce) and lentil soup (smelled bad). I think if I end up doing a homestay in the countryside, it’ll be an interesting culinary exchange.