Mongolia

Mongolian cuisine is shaped by nomadic life on the steppe, mutton, dairy, and dough dominate, from steamed buuz dumplings to hearty noodle stews. Milk teas, dried curds, and whole-animal cooking reflect a herding heritage.

The dairy has names and seasons. Suutei tsai is tea boiled with milk and salt and drunk all day; aaruul is curd dried hard on the roof of the ger and kept for months; airag is fermented mare's milk, mildly alcoholic and made in summer when the mares are in milk. The white foods are treated as a category of their own.

Meat is cooked with hot stones as often as with fire. Khorkhog puts mutton and river stones together in a sealed metal churn; boodog cooks the animal from the inside, stones packed into the cavity. Buuz, the steamed dumplings, belong above all to Tsagaan Sar, the lunar new year, when households make them by the hundred and stack them for arriving guests.

A rich Mongolian dessert of urum, clotted cream, cooked down slowly with sugar and a little flour into a thick, caramel-toned pudding eaten warm with a spoon.