uyghur.meal

your friends from kashi who hosted you throughout your stay... and insisted you to go on a xingjiang culinary experience...

starting with a very sour yogurt (酸奶）,  you learned about this in istanbul but got to try this here in kashi.  you have to add a lot of sugar in order to consume this extremely sour yogurt

another cold dish which is made of starch (凉皮) mixed with some chili oil and various herbs including the local chic peas...

 steamed buns with lamb 羊肉包 or pumpkin 南瓜包. you dislike the smell of lamb but you devour in the sweet pumpkin bun

 lamb skewers （烤羊肉串）, typical stable food in xingjiang province but this one is served in the restaurant, your friend still prefers the one from street stall tough for you this is your very first bite on lamb skewer that has a strong cumin flavor (thanked goodness)

 lanzhou ramen 兰州拉面, apparent quite a common dish too in xinjiang cuisine. this is okay to you, perhaps you are just not into greasy and oily bowl of noodles

 this dish 羊蹄 was a little too exotic to you, just the look already keep you the distant let alone the smell that shouting out "lamb" really put you off. you didn't try this no matter how hard your girlfriend tries to convince you that this is the very "spirit" of xinjiang food.

 stuffed lamb intestine 羊肠 and rice cake. you tried them but not really enjoying every bites... after so many days of intensive xinjiang meal, you fed up. this very moment you realize that you are chinese 'han' and the food from xinjiang is just a step too exotic for you...

so a plate of simple fried vegetable is what you really want, aka no more lamb please!

even this pot of mix starch soup, sort of gnocchi cooked in soup with vegetable is better for your stomach

another bowl of dumpling soup, simple and soothing but still taste very uyghur or xinjiang @.@

 the best grilled rack of lamb so far in the entire journey to the west experience or perhaps the best you have ever tasted before...

another batch of pumpkin bun, these are quite pleasurable to your palate.

so did you enjoy the uyghur culinary meal and xinjiang cuisine. no... no... you know you are very flexible, adventurous on food and blessed with an iron cast stomach but you have been there, seen that, tried them and move on...

nevertheless, the xinjiang hospitality of your friends are remarkable, you feel so blessed to know them and able to participate in some of the great things (besides food) that is happening in this very special province.

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i am at KLIA airport while writing this. still need to wait for a few hours to transfer to my final destination. the flight was great, for economy class, MAS has a far better service than the dutch airline. it was a pleasant experience flying with my home country airline.
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