Palav or osh, generically known as plov, is a rice dish made with shreddedyellow turnip or carrot, and pieces of meat, all fried together in vegetable oil or mutton fat in a special qazan over an open flame. The meat is cubed, the carrots are chopped finely into long strips, and the rice is colored yellow or orange by the frying carrots and the oil. The dish is eaten communally from a single large plate placed at the center of the table, often in with one's hands in the traditional way. Another traditional dish that is still eaten with hands from a communal plate is qurutob, whose name describes the preparation method: qurut is dissolved in water and the liquid is poured over strips of а thinflakyflatbread. Before serving the dish is topped with onions fried in oil until golden and other fried vegetables. No meat is added. Qurutob is considered the national dish. Meals are almost always served with non, flatbread found throughout Central Asia. If a Tajik has food but not non, he will say he is out of food. If non is dropped on the ground, people will put it up on a high ledge for beggars or birds. Legend holds that one is not supposed to put nonupside down because this will bringbad luck. The same holds true if anything is put on top of the non, unless it is another piece of non. Traditional Tajik soups include mainly meat and vegetable soups, and meat soups with noodles. Other dishes shared regionally, either as fast food or as an appetizer, include manti, tushbera, sambusa, and belyash. Soviet cuisine both influenced and was in turn influenced by Tajik cuisine.
Dairy products
dishes, usually served as part of the spread of appetizers in a Tajik meal and scooped with pieces of flatbread, include chaka, thick yogurt, and kaymak. Qurut balls may be served as a snack or an accompaniment to cold beverages. Although not a traditional Tajik drink, kefir, a drinking yogurt, is often served with breakfast.
In the summer, Tajikistan abounds in produce and fruit; its grapes and melons were famous throughout the former Soviet Union. The bazaar also sell pomegranates, apricots, plums, peaches, apples, pears, figs, and persimmons.
Beverages
generally accompanies every meal and is frequently offered between meals as a gesture of hospitality to guests and visitors. It is served hot in a china pot with a lid, and is drunk with sugar from small saucer-less cups without handles. Because of the universal popularity of tea-drinking, the choykhona, or teahouse, is the most common gathering place in Tajikistan, and is similar to the Western-style coffee house.
