Adventures with fermented horse milk
Last week, I tried fermented horse milk, kumis, the national drink of Kazakhstan. It's a little sweet, very acidic, and is believed to have medicinal properties.
According to friar William of Rubruck, a French monk who visited the Mongol Empire in the thirteenth-century, Kumis "is pungent… When a man has finished drinking, it leaves a taste of milk of almonds on the tongue, and it makes the inner man most joyful and also intoxicates weak heads, and greatly provokes urine."
I was alright on that last front, but to be honest, kumis is not my favorite fermented milk drink I've ever had.
I had my horse milk with plov, which was delicious as always. The more traditional pairing is beshbarmak (horse meat with egg noodles), but I had gone horseback riding earlier that day, and eating horse meat would have felt slightly wrong.
I promise I'll stop perseverating about kumis after this email, but you might be surprised to learn that horse milk has extremely high levels of lactose compared to other mammals. During fermentation, much of this lactose converts to lactic acid, but enough simple sugars remain to support yeast fermentation. In other words, kumis is mildly alcoholic.
The other day, I went to the Green Bazar, where I met an older gentleman named Bakitnur selling eggs. After chatting for a while, he informed me he really liked Kamala Harris, and he gifted me a bag of homemade fermented cheese curds (made from cow milk) called kurut. They were dry and salty but tasted pretty good!
Some other recent highlights include this yurt cat,
this triptych,
And, Kazakhstani Colonel Sanders:
I'm enjoying Almaty so much. This morning, I went on a run near Medeu, the highest ice-skating rink in the world. My friends wouldn't let me eat what I assumed were blueberries. Probably the right call.
After that, I went to the banya and checked out a few bookstores. I'm in Kazakhstan for just two more weeks, but I wish it was more. I've only scratched the surface of all the cool stuff to do here!
Happy adventures, everyone!