Tandir Kabob

The tandir itself is older than any of the cuisines that use it, and Central Asia's version is typically a large clay well set into the ground or built up from clay and straw. What distinguishes the Uzbek and Tajik use of it is the sealing: the mouth is closed with a lid and clay, turning the oven into a chamber rather than a fire.

The oven is fired with wood until the clay walls are saturated with heat, then the embers are allowed to die back and the lamb is hung on hooks so nothing touches the walls. The mouth is sealed, often with a wet cloth and clay, and the meat cooks for three to five hours in trapped heat and its own steam.

Because the chamber is closed, this is a hybrid of roasting and steaming, and it explains why tandir kabob is falling-apart tender rather than crusted. Juniper or fruitwood is chosen for aroma; the smoke that lingers in the sealed oven is absorbed by the meat far more than it would be over an open fire. The rendered fat collects below and is used or poured back over.

Whole sides of lamb are not a domestic proposition, but the logic scales: a bone-in shoulder or leg, heavily salted, set on a rack in a Dutch oven over a little water and a few crushed juniper berries standing in for the smoke, sealed and cooked at 150°C for three and a half hours, then uncovered hot for ten minutes only if you want colour. The three principles — suspended meat, trapped moisture, salt as the seasoning — carry over intact.

Salt is genuinely the whole seasoning in the traditional version, rubbed on generously several hours ahead. Some cooks add a paste of flour and water over the surface to seal it, which crisps and is discarded. A young animal matters here as it does in every long-cooked lamb dish.

Hacked into pieces and served by weight on non — the round tandir-baked flatbread — with sliced raw onion, fresh herbs and sometimes a bowl of the rendered fat for dipping the bread. Green tea, always, and in quantity. There is no sauce and none is wanted.