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Get Stuffed - exotic

How exotic can you get?

Startle your friends’ jaded sensibilities with some Uzbek culinary name-dropping: tried a good kuikat palov lately?

I admit it. After cutting my eyeteeth on crusty pork chops and mashed potatoes in the 1950s, just about anything other than prairie food beckoned. After all, there’s a limit to how many greyed meat loaves or beige casseroles a gal can take before mind and mouth open to things a little more colourful. And we aren’t talking Libby’s tinned spaghetti with the electric orange tomato sauce.

In all fairness, I shouldn’t be chauvinistic. Grey, beige and pastel food wasn’t exclusive to the Canadian west. Leonard Cohen makes no bones about his addiction to Kraft dinner, and he grew up in the cosmopolitan cradle of Montreal.

Mercifully, post-Libby’s and pre-’60s, there rose up in our fair nation, as if by some cosmically pre-ordained directive, a collective urge to reach beyond tinned spaghetti and shepherd’s pie. Suddenly, or so friends agree whenever we’ve drunk enough wine to share such embarrassments, Canadian moms ventured into what you couldn’t necessarily call different cuisines. Maybe "alternatives" was more like it.

Spanish rice (made with Minute rice). Eye-talian spaghetti sauce with hamburger. Chow mein topped with those goofy tinned noodles. It was as if moms in every province were suspended in some gelatinous foodland limbo – not quite letting go of the Miracle Whip, not quite moving on to the balsamic vinegar, thanks in large part to the tightly tied apron strings of food editors and advertisers in bibles like Better Homes and Gardens and Family Circle. But maybe it was also because Canada was so big and floppy and unsure of itself that we couldn’t find anything as fragile as a starfruit or as assertive as tarama. Even if we had, no one would have known what the hell they were anyway.

Then mysteriously, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, as the then very young, very flamboyant global village blossomed along with the flowers painted on Twiggy’s face and the rise in leisure travel, there developed in certain areas, defined as much by class boundaries as regional ones, an edgy – potentially tiresome – national sport: one-upmanship in unusual/exotic foods.

Primo bragging rights went to those who "discovered" a new restaurant or a new dish, the harder to find, the better. For instance, "discovering" one of the mysterious Doors – Red Door, Orange Door, Green Door – in Vancouver’s Chinatown alleys earned big points. Even Pierre Trudeau "discovered" the lemon chicken at the On-On.

By the ’80s, people were literally lining up at unpretentious places dishing up all things anathema to beige and grey. Some of the biggest lines wound round spicy Nick’s on Commercial Drive, and Orestes, the longest running show on Broadway, renowned as much for its Greek food as the booze that oozed from the ouserie.

Even though its population was small (say 1,800 on a good day), Whistler in the ’80s cut a fine culinary edge since so many locals were from far-flung places, or travelled a lot. Nick at L’Apres introduced hoards of hungry skiers to moussaka and tzatziki. Dos Señoritas at JB’s served up one mean enchilada. La Crèperie (later the Sundial), La Vallée Blanche, Araxi’s and Umberto’s Il Caminetto all redefined early Whistler good taste with pastas, couscous, crèpes, and seafood provencal.

Cheeseburgers and fries hung their heads in despair.

Before you knew it, pesto had forever outgunned green hot dog relish, and you were tripping over marinated oyster mushrooms and sashimi appetizers on your way to the nearest dinner party. The hunt for exotica had – and still has – a full head of steam, with tips on must-have condiments, gourmet food outlets, and the "latest" restaurants circulating faster than oil and gas futures.

So now that all your pals have discovered phad thai and nasi goreng, how on earth do you relegate them, in that off-hand way that’s so satisfying, to the kingdom of the palatally-challenged by asking if they’ve tried something, anything, they’ve never heard of before? Here’s one way: find a copy of Lynn Visson’s "The Art of Uzbek Cooking" and startle their jaded sensibilities with some Uzbek culinary name-dropping: tried a good kuikat palov lately? Egg samsas? How about a white radish/pomegranate salad?

Of course, you could really stir things up and actually serve one of the dishes well in advance of the gathering avant-garde about to discover all things Central Asian. For as the so-called war against terrorism unwinds in Afghanistan, all those mysterious "-stan" countries of Central Asia – Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Afghanistan itself – will be high on the list of exotic kingdoms awaiting our thrilled "discovery."

Never mind that Uzbekistan is home to the tragic Aral Sea, dying painfully after the Soviet machine sucked it dry to irrigate cotton crops. The republic is rich in other ways, sporting 1,000 varieties of melons and a cuisine enriched by centuries of exotic conquerors and immigrants – Greeks, Persians, Huns, Turks, Chinese, Arabs, and, most recently, Koreans.

If you’re lucky enough to explore Uzbekistan before the fast-food franchisees do, you’ll be greeted by warm hospitality. "A guest is God’s friend" goes an Uzbek proverb, and it is taken to heart. If your luck further multiplies, Allah willing, and you’re invited into an Uzbek home, expect an impromptu meal of half a dozen salads, lamb plov, bowls of sweets (including halvah), fruit (maybe several kinds of the legendary 1,000 melons, or quinces and persimmons), green tea and, always, the big rounds of Uzbek bread, called non –beautifully decorated and alternately seasoned with lamb fat, onion, poppy seeds or nigella.

More likely, you might try Uzbek food the next time you’re in New York. Queens’ Kew Gardens area has attracted several Uzbek restaurants and bakeries. Closer to home, Seattle, sister city to Uzbek’s capital, Tashkent, had a restaurant that served Uzbek food, but unfortunately it has closed.

Short of buying yourself a plane ticket to Tashkent or New York, you could do worse that trying Ms. Visson’s book for a taste of the next trend-in-waiting. After all, any cuisine that can simultaneously look brilliant orange kim chee and a salad dashed with ruby pomegranate seeds right in the eye and not blink has a leg up on seducing us all, even those not from the prairies.

How exotic have you gotten? Fish soup complete with eyeballs? Deep-fried locusts? I’m collecting tales of the weirdest things you’ve ever eaten. E-mail the tasty details to: gbartosh@telus.net