At the market: Юу вэ? What is it?

I think it's about time for a blogpost. Yes, it's been a while. Let's reconnect. And I think I'll reboot with something easy (food). Marriage, the education system, social class, infrastructure and city planning--I'll get to those later.

Yesterday I bought a small jar of salted chives called homuul (хөмүүл) at the "Green Days of Fall" harvest festival. In its 8th year, this green market festival takes place for about a week when it starts to get cool. This year, it's located at the new Dunjingarav trade center, a bright orange building on the southern edge of the UB city center. [I suspect this center will be quite popular in the winter, as it's all indoors: like Bombughur in variety (clothes, cosmetics, appliances, etc.), but the size of Narantuul (an outdoor market, the largest in Mongolia).]

The market operates in the same way as the daily government-supported summer green markets in the city: farmers from the countryside bring their fresh produce into the city and sell it directly to the buyers, getting a better price for their fruits and veg than if they were to sell to a middle-man. The sellers and their products are also supposedly checked out by the government as authentically local and Mongolian-grown (hard to come by, as many of the fruits and vegetables come from China). As a customer, I like knowing that I'm supporting the everyday Mongolian, that the vegetables are almost organic, and you can even find potatoes that go for 300 tugrik a kilo (that's like less than 20 cents a kilo, folks. WTF?!).

I've seen and overlooked many of the canned goods at the green markets around UB, because, well they're canned. But my Mongolian market companion successfully convinced me yesterday to get this particular variety: homuul/хөмүүл is grown in the Gobi desert, he said, and has numerous health benefits, like preventing cancer. He said he himself keeps a big jar in his fridge over the winter, and throws it into anything savory. Gobi? Oooh, okay. And then I took a whiff of it: onion-y! I was sold. I could already imagine it in a hot breakfast omelette.

*It only took opening the jar to convince me to buy this--the onion-y smell just wafts out!

So I went home and did some internet research. The horticultural name for homuul/хөмүүл is allium mongolicum. It is indeed from the Gobi desert and grows in dry, sandy, and gravelly soils. Like many Mongolian florae, it has a very short harvesting period, which I think is probably why it is salted when it's put in jars for sale. The one that I bought was roughly chopped, but also available were jars of minced or mashed homuul/хөмүүл for use in bohtz/бууз (steamed meat dumpling) or hoshuur/хуушуур (fried meat dumpling, like an empanada). Apparently, in the desert, in addition to the essential milky tea, homuul bohtz is a typical way to greet visitors and extend hospitality.

*Picture of homuul/хөмүүл in its natural habitat, from a German survey

Homuul is one of those very local things you can only find in markets and never in a grocery store. Also included in that list are berries (the huge variety of berries), certain roots, rhubarb, and wide white mushrooms. On our way back from the Chinggis Khaan statue a few weeks ago, we were met with numerous locals on the side of the road with their arms thrust out, holding plastic bags filled with large white-capped mushrooms. Mushrooms are hard to find in the markets, and they're usually of the imported shiitake variety. Mongolia does have mushrooms, I thought, and they're big and beautiful!!! I wanted to pull over and buy a bag, but regretfully didn't. Back in UB, they could hardly be found. One of the other Fulbrighters did manage to find someone selling them, but it was outside the market and not inside. (For the record, those steppe mushrooms are really rich with mushroom-y flavor!)

It made me wonder why more unique, native species of fruits and vegetables aren't cultivated as much as say, potatoes, cabbage, beets, and cucumbers. During the summer you can find bins of different types of berries, and it seems that the variety offered changes every 2 weeks depending on what's in season. There are so many types and they're so unique I don't even think there are definitive English names for them. For example, ners/нэрс is my absolute favorite berry: they're super juicy, the pits are small and edible, and unlike many of the other berries, it's sweet enough to eat straight without honey. They most commonly call it blueberry here, but it is most certainly not blueberry! Bolor-toli Mongolian-English online dictionary comes up with the following translations for ners/нэрс: bilberry, blueberry, whimberry, whortberry, great bilberry, huckleberry, swamp blueberry, whortleberry. I would say the wikipedia for swamp whortleberry matches what I have in my fridge the most. Ans (аньс) is another commonly known berry. But it's even hard for some Mongolians to name them all. Although they're bountiful and absolutely delicious, these berries can't be found bagged and labeled at a grocery store, and they're only occasionally scratched on cardboard signs at the markets. Knowledge of them by non-locals can only be had by experimentation or through a savvy translator.

*Berries at Narantuul

An exception to all this would be sea buckthorn--there's been a huge push to promote sea buckthorn and sea buckthorn products. They're abundant here, and their reported health benefits are vast. Mongolians are proud to share the orange berry with the world, labeling the products not only in English but in other Asian languages as well. On the main street going west a couple of weeks ago, there were poster ads every block promoting the 100 brand of sea buckthorn juice. At the State Department store, they were giving out samples. On the shelves of even smaller grocery stores you can find a few varieties of sea buckthorn concentrates--sweetened and unsweetened. There are several types of sea buckthorn wine. And then sea buckthorn candies. I've seen sea buckthorn oil sold at Mercury Market. To my amazement at the Dunjingarav market, they were even selling the sea buckthorn saplings (male and female). Ners/нэрс and ans/аньс products exist, but in lesser and less common quantities. (What I would to have some нэрс wine!)

*Fulbright researcher Aleah is pretty pleased to find sea buckthorn berries for the first time. These berries, from a few weeks ago, are a different variety than the more plump sea buckthorn berries that are in season now.

                                                                                                                          

Rhubarb, having originated from Mongolian mountainsides, is also conspicuously absent from the shelves and roadside stands. It flourishes on the mountains surrounding Ulaanbaatar city, and even as a weed in the Turkish Embassy garden off the main strip. We were ecstatic to find so many of the red stalks on our hike from Zuun mod/Зүүн мод a few weekends ago.

*My hiking comrades later made a kind of jam with the rhubarb we collected. Warning--apparently green rhubarb tastes like onion! Pick only the reddest you can find.

So it was strange to be in this metropolitan city and not see any rhubarb being sold anywhere, not even outside the markets. This may be because rhubarb in this part of the world has not been viewed to have any culinary value, but rather medicinal value. The leaves are toxic, but apparently Mongolians will chew the raw stalks as a laxative and to treat other digestive ailments. It wasn't until it traveled down the Silk Road to Europe that it began to be used widely as a pie-filler and strawberry complement like it is commonly used today. So my western self can't help but think how the Mongolian food industry could benefit from exporting wild, organic rhubarb.

There seems to be at least a little bit of technical curiosity, though, about the benefits of some of these plants and if cultivation is a worthwhile pursuit. Much of the English language literature online on homuul/хөмүүл, for example, asks questions with nutritional (content and fat metabolism), ethnobotanical (here and here), and seemingly agricultural (soil, spacing, community and climate) contexts. Most of these studies are done by Inner Mongolian researchers in collaboration with and with funding by Chinese research groups. There's also an excellent German project online that aims to document all the flora in Mongolia, which is terrific, but difficult for the layperson to use for practical purposes.

There are so many plants and wildflowers and fruits and vegetables that I would love to identify, but it's difficult even with Mongolian friends translating, to figure out what they are. I went on a hike last weekend with my Mongolian co-workers, and I asked what some of the wildflowers on the mountain were. They had no idea what they were called, even in Mongolian. And then I thought, well, you'd have to be a trained naturalist or very good hobbyist to be able to tell what all the plants are in the woods of Virginia suburbia, even.

*A beautiful view from the mountains surrounding the ger camp the Otgontenger University staff (we)retreated to last weekend. More mountain flora to follow in future posts.

So investigations on identifying the various plants and native edibles of Mongolia continues! We encountered my latest puzzle today on a visit back to the fall harvest market. An elderly woman was selling ankle bone belts, homuul/хөмүүл, and small bags of an unidentified raw vegetable cut into 3- 4-inch stalks. They resembled some kind of stringy root vegetable, mostly white but speckled with pink-brown bits. It reminded me of taro, but more narrow and earthy. Our weak Mongolian understanding gleaned that it was meant to be eaten raw, and not cooked, and that it's good for the stomach. I thought it might be a kind of sugar cane, but she shook her head. She finally opened up a bag and broke off a small piece for us to taste (it broke off pretty easily, like a half-cooked potato), and it tasted like a very unripe banana, quite stringent. What could it be?! She said something that sounded like hatan/хатан, or queen in English, so my best lead right now is that it's Queen Anne's Lace root / wild carrot. The curiosity lingers for this English-speaking eater!

Eating Escapades

Right now I'm enjoying the hearty meatiness of meals here in Mongolia. I've found myself finishing every last bit of mutton on my plate and salty broth in my bowl, even though I know my poor liver's sweating it out trying to process all the yolks and fat and cholesterol. (I need to visit a gym... soon.)

Saturday last week, we spent one of our last free days before classes exploring the neighborhood in and around Gina's and Katie's universities (unlike mine, they are within walking distance of Sukhbaatar Square and our apartment). As we walked away from Sukhbaatar, we saw less and less restaurants with English-letter signs. But we were hungry, so we looked through windows searching for chairs and tables that might suggest a restaurant.

When we found one and sat ourselves down, the menu was all in Cyrillic Mongolian--no English translations which many of the menus we'd previously encountered thankfully had. So with pictures, our phrasebook, my familiarity with the Russian alphabet, and lots of gesturing, we managed to order our first meal by ourselves without any English.

Our first meal also happened to be pretty authentically Mongolian. We ordered the khohshorr lunch platter.  We hadn't had хуушуур before, but it looked familiar and delicious. And it was--khohshorr is a fried meat dumpling. It came out hot, a bubbly pastry with ground mutton and its tasty juices dripping from the inside. The lunch platter also included a meat and cabbage soup, cabbage salad (with carrots in a slightly sweet vinaigrette), potato salad (very Russian, I thought--with cucumber and tomato in a mayonnaise dressing), and of course milky tea.

 

Our first Mongolian meal: meat and cabbage stew, khohshorr, milky tea, cabbage salad, potato salad

Milky tea deserves its own paragraph, as it's quintessentially Mongolian. It's a hot drink that often comes with every meal. In spite of its name, it's more of tea-y milk: warm fatty milk with salt and just enough tea to make the drink off-white. I think of it as a savory milk soup. I can imagine it being quite comforting coming in from the bitter cold, but with other heavy helpings next to it and the weather being quite mild, it's hard to down it all.

But in the end, I finished the whole salty, greasy feast--soup, 2 entire near-hand size dumplings, and all. And given it was our first real Mongolian meal ordered on our own, I was quite proud to finish it off.
 

Common carbohydrate side dishes are Будаа ("budaa," rice) and мантуу ("mantoh," a white bread like in sio-pao or steamed pork buns)

A popular soup dish--mini meat dumplings with meat in a hot meat broth.

In Mongolia, everything tastes... more.

We bought some cow's milk the other day (my apartment has pretty heavy milk drinkers) and it's like you can taste the grass and the udders and every part of the cow in the milk. Beef has a game-y taste to it, mutton has got a chew, and eggs have orange yolks.

A fellow ETA Peter introduced one of our orientation coordinators Tungaa to the phrase "factory farming." As far as I know, there isn't any of that here. So it makes sense and it makes me feel good that most of the animals we are eating have been grass-fed on wide pastures in the countryside. They're essentially organic.

In the markets, vendors sell their red meats cut up in particular pieces, laid out on the counter in the open air. No refrigeration, no ice. (I want to believe this is because the meats are so fresh and are sold so quickly.) When we went to Mercury Mart, the "international grocery store", a woman was taking a hand saw to a rack of ribs and really hacking it up. It was something to see (and hear)!

Ladies doling out the fresh meats

It's clear what isn't local and fresh as far as meat products: chicken, fish, squid, and other seafoods are laid out half frozen or are displayed in open freezers.

Freezers with squid, fish, and chicken

Only recently have fish been considered foodstuffs in Mongolia. Although the country is land-locked, there are several types of freshwater fish that can be found in the rivers. But throughout history, fish were left undisturbed because they were considered the children, or the princes and princesses, of the water god. Now, those sentiments are changing. However, many Mongolians will tell you that it doesn't feel like they're eating meat when they eat fish or chicken.

Yesterday, Tungaa accompanied us to what will most likely be my favorite grocery spot for the next few weeks: Bombugurrh Market. Erdene, our other coordinator, was hesitant to take us there since it's more "where the Mongolians shop"--cheap, cramped, crowded, dim, and unattractive. Apart from supermarkets like Nomin Supermarket, Bombughurr Market operates much like all the other markets. That is, there are many vendors selling their wares in their particular square footage under one roof.

At Mercury Mart, there isn't much to distinguish where one vendor ends and the other one starts. Many of the "stalls" have the same products, as well. So you just have to hold an object and the closest person that makes eye contact with you is probably the seller. One thing as well, at least with Mercury Mart, is that the prices aren't stamped on the products. It's more work, but to find the best deal, you have to go from one stall to another and ask the cost of a particular product from each vendor.

It's the same at the Tedy Center. The entire building is dedicated to the sale and maintenance of mobile phones and personal electronics. It's bright and shiny with nice couches and even an Apple gadget store on the 1st floor, but on the upper levels, buying and selling proceeds in much the same manner as a market. In one hall, there are multiple cubicle stores, and even within each boxed-in area, there are multiple vendors. We looked at a couple of counters in a couple of different cubicles until we settled on one to buy our cell phones from.

A well-known store in the center of Ulaanbaatar is the State Department store. It sells pretty much everything. Cosmetics and jewelry on the first floor, clothes on the 2nd and 3rd, household wares on the 4th, notebooks on the 6th, etc. It's the easy one-stop shop. But it's pretty much guaranteed that everything you buy is at elevated prices. Bombugurrh is great because it's one of those one-stop shops, but everything is at average or below-average prices. The caveat? Little to no English.

I was grateful, then, that Tungaa stayed with us to show us around the market for an hour past schedule. We learned about things and tasted things that we would otherwise not have been able to try or simply fathom its everyday use.

For example, laid out in the meats section were a bunch of unfamiliar cuts of meat. One in particular we asked about. It took some careful questions and explanation, and we think Tungaa described one of the cuts of meat as either horse intestine or horse rectum ("we clean it out very well"). It is prepared by stuffing the cavity with another kind of meat, and then slicing it into medallions after cooking. Horse, she explained, is a favorite during the winter. It's quite nourishing (read: high protein and fat content) and high in nutrients. 

Horse parts

My favorite food discovery that day was aaruul, dried yogurt or milk curds, that I remember watching Andrew Zimmern eat on an episode of Bizarre Foods. The stand that we visited was exclusively sheep products: sheep fat, different preparations of the milk curds. The vendor was kind enough to let us sample all of the products. Aaruul comes in different types, named after the shape it's formed into. It's not part of a dish or anything, but eaten as a snack. The most common one I've seen is the horhuul ("worm") type, and that's the first one we tried. It tasted pretty much exactly as it sounds--like dried yogurt. Tangy, slightly sweet. My favorite part of it is its chewy texture. (If you've had dates pressed and powdered in that shape, I would say the texture is similar to that of horhuul aaruul. Other varieties I've heard the texture described as parmesan cheese.) The second, rounder one tasted basically the same but was creamier. Then, Tungaa pointed out a bag of yellow clumps that I was surprised to learn was also a preparation of sheep's milk. It was as hard as rock! And didn't taste like much. But it was an interesting chewing exercise. I'd like to think that eating these milk curds are doing something for the healthy flora in my gut! Perhaps to help digest all the chewy mutton.



Various shapes of aaruul




Gina and Katie listening to Tungaa and tasting aaruul for the first time



"Rock candy"

 Our generous rubiks-cube-playing aaruul vendor
 

Speaking of mutton, we went to a rather fancy restaurant chain called Modern Nomads to meet with our main point of contact at the U.S. Embassy, Uyanga A. The menu had a large variety of foods, from Greek salad and broccoli soup to ox tongue and sheep's head. I remember Anthony Bourdain having either sheep's or pig's head and remarking that cheeks are the best part of the animal. And I would agree. Everything was very tender and flavorful. You (I) might only need to not think too hard when you (I) see tongue papillae and a snout's nostril...



Sheep's head

Sheep indeed is the most common of the meats, and then probably beef and we saw horse on the menu. Horse is valued rather highly not only as a creature and symbol but as a food: it's the meat of choice in the winter because of its high calorie and nutrient content. I haven't seen camel on the menu yet, but it's also eaten, particularly in the Gobi desert regions. All together, sheep, beef, horse and camel are considered "warm mouth" animals. Goat is consumed on a more limited basis as it's considered a "cold mouth" animal. Whereas the other meats "makes the body warm," goat has a cooling effect. In fact, it's only eaten during the early summer. A Mongolian student, Temuliin, told me that in the spring, a particular flower grows that goats graze on -- the flower improves the taste of the goat meat. So it is only during this time that Mongolians eat goat.

Native Mongolian fruits and sea buckthorn probably deserve their own blog entry (as many of these topics probably should, and would, had I the time) but I will go ahead and talk about them now. Sea buckthorn is a yellow-orange berry that grows in Mongolia. I've seen it as a juice, a sweetened hot milk drink, and jam. Just recently on our visit to Narantuul market, I saw it for the first time as a picked whole and fresh fruit. Mongolians consider sea buckthorn (and many other berries, for that matter) very healthy and healing. They will sell these fresh berries from stands or even roving shopping carts, with a small glass and a Ball-like jar for scooping and pricing. In one instance, a vendor was spooning the berry juices from the bottom of the bowl into a plastic bottle: a pricey bottle of liquid elixir, I imagine! 

Fresh sea buckthorn! And various Mongolian berries in jam form.

 

So many types of berries!

I haven't seen many of these berries before, but they're quite common here and grow readily on Mongolian ground. Our teacher who accompanied us through Narantuul remarked that she had at least 2 of these berries growing by her house. Her мойл plant grew unintentionally out of some haphazard berries, and has now been growing for almost 3 years. She expects it to produce fruit within the next year or so. I believe she said that she has a sea buckthorn plant as well, but it hasn't yet started to bear fruit this season.

Mongolians have trouble giving English names to these berries. We even encountered a fruit that most Mongolians don't even know. It's yellow and rugby ball-shaped. According to the vendor, this melon, along with the watermelon on the stand, was grown out of a desert oasis in the Hovd region of Mongolia. Many fruits come from China or other countries, but this particular fruit is actually grown (or at least cultivated) in Mongolia. The vendor called it тэнгуа. More than one local had no idea what this fruit was by name or visual. So it will take a little more research to pin down the origins of this fruit!

The mysterious yellow melon

We actually came away with a couple bags of berries and a whole тэнгуа, so I might report back later on the taste of these very indigenous flavors.

Still on the list of to-do eats: "red bibbery" (or perhaps red barberry?) in any form (juice, jam, fresh), airag (fermented mare's milk), horse.