Tajik cuisine

Palav or osh, generically known as plov (pilaf), is a rice dish made with julienne cut carrot, and pieces of meat, all fried together in vegetable oil or mutton fat in a special cookware called deg (a wok-shaped cauldron) over an open flame.

[1] Breakfast usually consists of tea, kulcha (Tajik milk bread) or non with butter, hasib (sausage), panir (Feta cheese), qaymoq or sarshir, murabbā (jam), tukhmbiryān (omelettes with meat), etc.

belyashi, Tajik: беляши, deep-fried cakes made of yeast dough and filled with minced meat, similar to pirozhki).

[2] Dairy dishes, usually served as part of the spread of appetizers in a Tajik meal and scooped with pieces of flatbread, include chakka (a sour milk preparation), thick yogurt, and kaymak (high-fat clotted cream).

It is served hot in a china pot with a lid, and is drunk with sugar from small saucer-less cups without handles (piola).

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.