True Mongolian food is mainly meat, milik and flour. These ingredients are most accessible to the nomadic tribes of Mongolia.

Our dinner at Shilingol, a small restaurant in Sengoku, was mainly lamb and milk products. We started with a salty milk tea and fried bread, then dug into the only vegetable for the meal—shredded potatoes with garlic. Mainly we ate meat: spicy lamb shish kebab; steamed buns filled with seasoned mutton; lamb on the bone; lamb and seasonings wrapped in flatbread; slices of salty dried lamb.

At 8:00 one of the cooks came out and played traditional Mongolian tunes on a long-necked, square bodied string instrument called a morin khuur. The music was multiharmonic and dissonent but quite beautiful and complex.

We rounded out our dinner with deep fried dough served with a milk glaze for dipping—Mongolian doughnuts. Posted by kuri at February 19, 2002 07:17 AM