Turkmenistan | Ichlekli

CLICK HERE FOR THE RECIPE I USED

Turkmenistan is a desert country in Central Asia that I really only knew two things about prior to this project.

1. It is home to one of the most beautiful breeds of horses in the world, the Akhal-Teke.

2. It is also the home of the Darvaza gas crater, AKA the Door to Hell or Gates of Hell.

The more I delved into Turkmenistan that more interesting it got and not necessarily in a good way. But all that mess is for someone else to explain, I’m here for the food. (BTW, the second Sunday in August, is National Melon Day in Turkmenistan. They are very proud of their melons.)

Despite being one of Turkmenistan’s national dishes, Ichlekli does not contain any melons. I saw it referred to, several times, as their version of Shepherd’s Pie.

I didn’t have to order anything special or exotic to make Ichlekli. It is traditionally made with lamb but beef is also acceptable and what I used. It does not used mashed potatoes, instead, the crust is made from a simple dough of flour, water, salt, and butter. The filling is ground meat, onions, bell pepper, tomato, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper.

The most difficult part of preparing it was rolling out the dough because I don’t have a lot of counterspace to work with and I always make a mess when using flour.

Everything else was either chopping or combining ingredients.

I did make one adjustment. I reduced the amount of water used in the filling because the tomato I used was one of the juiciest tomatoes I’d ever encountered in my life and I just dumped it (after dicing it) and all its juice into the filling mixture.

How did it turn out?

A huge, lop-sided, strange-looking, and better-tasting-than-I-expected meat pie.

I was worried that this would be bland and flavorless but it wasn’t! The beef and veggies combine to create a nice subtle flavor that would be a good thing to make for someone who doesn’t like heavily seasoned food. Or can’t eat spicy food. I actually really enjoyed it, it has a nice comfort food feel to it and the leftovers will get eaten, though I might have to freeze some because it was larger than I anticipated.

Would I make it again?

Probably not but that’s just because I don’t enjoy rolling out dough and making a floury mess of my kitchen. If someone made it for me, I’d happily eat it again. :)

It tastes much better than the way I made it look!