Kazakh Cuisine

Peter Kenyon, wrote a great piece about Horse meat within the Kazakhstan culture
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/03/04/173448013/in-kazakhstan-no-horror-at-horse-meat
In Kazakhstan horse meat is a very popular and is usually the most expensive meat that you could find it the stores.

The Kazakh cuisine revolves around mutton, horse meat and fermented milk products (including camel and horse milk as well).

At large functions like weddings the starter would include various salads, salmon and horse sausage and other cold meats.
Besbarmak is a tradition dish that includes boiled mutton or horse meat served with a broth, pasta sheets onions and potatoes, and is also very popular dish for weddings.

One of my favourite is Baursaki, a deep-fried dough ball (almost like a doughnut - but without all the sugar).

Lagman is another great dish, which is a pasta dish with a meat sauce. Manti is the local version of dumplings and then there is also Pilaf, a meat and rice dish ( pictured below).

Samsa is pasties or pies filled with meat and/or potatoes and other vegetables.

The traditional bread made here is just as great, the best for me is a flat round bread with stamp patterns on,  as seen in the pictures below.  Unlike other countries, here they don't put preservatives in their bread, so don't expect bread to last more than 2 or 3 days.

Generally, the flavours are not really strong and might seem bland to some individuals that are more accustomed to rich, strong and complicated flavours.

The basics of all Kazakh dishes are meat, onions and potatoes, which is strongly influenced by the Soviet era. Although the Soviet era was marked by long queues and limited ingredients, it also created a whole new approach to food which was about less complicated flavours. An interesting article by Sergei Roganov describe how this Soviet food is finding renewed popularity with in modern day Russia.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/russianow/cuisine/9778200/soviet-food-popular.html
This craze is even stretching as far as the States with the Iron Curtain Restaurant in New York http://gothamist.com/2012/06/06/get_a_taste_of_iron_curtains_pan-so.php