Inside the market - a quick round up.
I had grilled chicken for lunch but it could easily have been lamb or beef shish kebab or shashlik. Meat is always served with raw onion - said to aid the digestion and certainly productive of voluminous flatulence. A pot of green tea, bread and tomato salad are standard accompaniments.
P'lov is a national dish and widely available. Slightly oily rice (think pilaf) with a few veges and chopped lamp cooked up in a big open stir fry. Delicious.
Mulberries, strawberries, cherries and apricots are in season. Mulberries come in both black and white varieties. The mulberry tree is widespread throughout the region and there are the weeping and ordinary varieties.
It must be a tough tree to survive and thrive in the climate. It has many uses - fruit, juicing, firewood, papermaking and food for silk worms are those i have seen or know of. The trees are available in the colourful nursery.
By necessity, the bakeries are very productive. And as is normal in an Asian market, the butcheries are fairly gruesome places. Horse hoof soup anybody?
As can be seen, the women are beautifully and colourfully dressed as a matter of everyday course. Whilst most have shawls, i think this may be more a dress thing rather than religious - this is a very Islam-lite country.
