Дахиад Наадам (Second Naadam): How to Make Hooshor!

Hello everyone!  I just finished my language proficiency exam and my last health volunteer assessment interview, so now I just have a long weekend separating me from finding out my site placement where I will live and work for the next two years!  I thought that the exam and interview went well, but I won't know any results until Monday, when I will get a certificate with my language proficiency (novice intermediate, novice high, intermediate low, etc).  Mongolian Peace Corps volunteers are supposed to reach novice high level by the end of summer training, so let's hope that I got at least that!

Today I am going to talk about how to make the Mongolian traditional food called Hooshor (Хуушур).    Hooshor is basically like a flat, meat filled empanada or hot pocket.  Many families eat it often, and it is basically the only food that is eaten for the two day celebration of Naadam.  Another food, called Booz (Бууз, pronounced like the word 'boats'), is eaten regularly and also during White Month (Цагаан Сар/Tsagaan Sar), which is the Mongolian Lunar New Year celebration.  I'm sure I will have an update about Booz closer to Febuary for White Month/Tsagaan Sar.

So, I don't have a recipe for Hooshor.  I'm not sure if a recipe exists, because it seems like the sort of thing that you just get a feel for making over time.  Here is my best guess for the ingredients involved, and hopefully the pictures will give you an idea of amounts:

For the floury outside layer (I don't have any pictures of this being prepared because my host mom usually makes the dough in advance and lets it rise a little):

• flour
• salt
• yeast
• water

For the filling:

• ground MEAT.  Lots of it. 
• garlic (optional)
• onions or green onions (optional)
• salt (NOT optional to Mongolians!)

***You can also make potato hooshor, which are very delicious!  They usually are made with boiled and mashed potatoes, a few carrots or other boiled and mashed vegetables, possibly some meat and salt for flavor. Besides the filling, all of the steps are the same.



First, start by preparing the dough and letting the dough set for a while.  Then, mix the meat, salt, and whatever else you feel like adding in.

The dough is ready, and after deciding to add a bit more garlic, we were ready to begin!

Our meat mixture:  my host mom likes lots of garlic.  I have seen Mongolians taste a little bit of the meat mixture by licking some of it to see if it is good.  I would not recommend this, for obvious meat safety issues!

The dough is ready to be rolled out.  To do this, first cut the dough into roughly ping-pong sized pieces, which will be rolled out to form each hooshor pocket.  

Our ping-pong sized pieces.  My cousin is spreading extra flour on the pieces and the board to help with rolling out.  Also, the bruise on her arm is from getting in a small car accident--from what I understood, the car suddenly stopped or hit a large bump, and she hit her arm really hard on the door--about a week before this.

My cousin was in charge of rolling out hooshors the day I took these photos.  My mom was frying, and my mom's younger brother was pinching the hooshor closed, which is an artform you will see later on.  I was in charge of taking pictures (self assigned), staying out of the way (self assigned), and assisting in pinching hooshor (half-heartedly assigned to keep the American involved).

After the small piece of dough is rolled flat, a small amount of filling is added.  Too much, and the hooshor will not pinch closed, and too little and the hooshor is too doughy.

After some filling is added is the trickiest part of preparing hooshor.  There are multiple ways of pinching the hooshor closed, and I just couldn't get the hang of my uncle's method even though I tried for a good half hour.  First, he would fold the dough in half, with most of the filling in the center.  Then, he would start to pinch the sides together, alternating between each side of the dough edge.

This forms a neat edge where there are alternating puckers and no open holes in the dough.  He makes it look easy, believe me!

Then, after the hooshor is fully sealed (look at that beautiful edge pattern!), pat the hooshor to flatten it and squish around the filling to be equally spread out. pat, pat, pat!  This is one part of the hooshor pinching that I could actually do!

My uncle's finished hooshor, ready to be fried.  Note the pretty edging and uniform appearance....

And then here is one of my best attempts at hooshor pinching.  Easily recognizable by my awful edging and uneven dough.  My host mom ate this one, and she said it still tasted good, so there is yet hope for us beginners!

Hooshors being fried:  The vegetable oil is heated up, and then hooshors are added.  Depending on the filling, size, and temperature of the oil, the cooking time can vary.  The best method is to check the underside, and if it is lightly brown, then it is time to flip!

You can see the light brown color of the top hooshor, which was turned at just the right time.  After a little while on this side, check the underside again and remove when both sides are lightly browned. 

Let cool for a few minutes before devouring as many as you can.  Beware of dripping juices escaping from the bottom of the hooshor as you eat!  It is hot and will probably stain your clothes!  

The best location to eat hooshor is Naadam, the two day festival held every July.  A man from Celenge Province where I am living won the national wrestling competition that is an integral part of Naadam (the other two sports being long distance horse racing and archery).  He decided that the best use of his prize money would be to host another Naadam in his province, so Sukhbaatar had a second Naadam last Friday.  We made these hooshor at home on Friday with the intention of bringing them to Naadam to watch the end of the wrestling tournament, but we finished just as Naadam finished.  Instead, we picked up the rest of our family that had stayed at Naadam, and headed down to the river to eat our hooshor.  Definitely a great way to start the weekend!

Now, I am off to take a nap before celebrating the completion of exams with my friends.  I hope everyone has a great weekend, and that everyone in Boone County has a great fair week!

Баяртай! Goodbye!

Naadam!

This past week was a major Mongolian holiday called Naadam.  It is their Independence celebration, and is basically a big festival honoring three Mongolian traditional sports: long distance horse racing, archery, and Mongolian wrestling.  Each town and province has their own 2-day celebration, culminating in the national celebration near the capital.

My Naadam was really great, and I had a lot of fun!  It would take ages to write about everything that happened, so I will try to give a good overview.

The first morning of Naadam, I woke up excited for a full day of Naadam festivities (and class in the afternoon which was pretty unfortunate).  I put on my Mongolian Deel (pronounced like "dell" in Wisconsin Dells) and my sister and brother and I took a taxi to our town's Naadam Stadium. 

Me in my deel in front of the stadium.  My deel is a more traditional deel, some of my friends have the shorter version of the deel dress, which you can see in later pictures.  

We walked around for a bit, going past the stadium to where there were Mongol tents (gers) set up.  We walked past 40 or 50 gers and stopped at my mom's family's ger. My mom and her two sisters were making and selling hoosher from their ger.  

My mom bringing out hoosher for some customers.  Hoosher is basically like a homemade hot pocket:  flour wrapped meat that is fried.  They are very delicious, and I ate pretty much only hoosher for two days straight during Naadam.

My sister selling hoosher! 

After staying at my family's ger for a while, my sister and I went to the stadium to watch the Naadam opening ceremonies.

A super cute kid in a wrestling costume (they look exactly like this, except on really big, fat Mongolian men) was sitting right in front of me!

Wrestlers and former wrestling champions walked around the stadium in men's traditional Deels.

These children are all carrying horse head fiddles, one of the unique Mongolian instruments.  It sounds really neat, and can make sounds like horses galloping and neighing.  These children all played together for a few songs in the opening ceremonies.

After the opening ceremonies, we walked around again for a bit.

I ran into one of my Mongolian language teachers!  Her name is Aagii, and she is super funny and a great teacher. 

After a full morning of Naadam festivities, the health group met up to go to our afternoon lesson.  We are grumbled about having to leave, but it gave us a reason to get a photo looking all snazzy together!

The health group from left to right: Cedell, Me, Ryan, Brittany, Jerome, Kelbe, Laura, and Sarah!

Class wasn't too bad, and I went to Naadam for a bit afterwards.  After a while, my sister and I went home, where my cousin (who is about the same age as my sister) was babysitting her three young siblings.  We had fun hanging out for a while, and my sister and I washed our hair.  At some point a drunk man I didn't know came over and was talking to my cousin.  Then he went outside and was lifting a weight bar that was in my yard for some reason.  My sister and cousin were telling him to stop because it looked like he might hurt himself, and so I think he got mad at them and started yelling to them in Mongolian.  I went to my room to stay out of it, but a few minutes later I heard him pick up the weight bar and use it to smash out two of the windows in my room, which were right in front of where the weight bar was laying.  

The aftermath.

This brings up a serious issue in Mongolia: alcoholism.  There are many belligerent drunk men at any time of the day, and from what I have seen this is even worse during holidays.  It is an issue that Mongolians are aware of and trying to deal with, but it is really unfortunate to see so many men here who do nothing much besides drink all the time.  

Having our windows smashed was of course traumatic for me and my family, and it definitely put a damper on the fun we had had at Naadam.  However, we cleaned up the broken glass, patched up the windows for the night, and the next morning we all headed back to the Naadam stadium. 

My second day of hoosher eating, plus today I had some carrot salad! Yay for vegetables!

This is the stove in the ger that my mother was cooking hoosher on.  It gets really hot, since it is right over the fire that keeps the whole ger warm in the winter!

The second morning, I got to 'ride' a horse.  Basically I sat on one of my family friend's horses and he led me around for a while, and everyone stared at the silly American on the horse.  It was still lots of fun though!

Then, I went to watch the end of a horse race.  Mongolian horse racing is long distance, so the races last for maybe an hour or so, and everyone gets ready at the finish line.  It is thought that the sweat from the winning horse will bring luck, so after the first horses arrived everyone rushed to the corral set up for the winners and tried to grab a sweaty cloth to wipe on their face.  Fortunately for me, my family that was with me wasn't into that, so I remained horse-sweat free!  The end of the race was really cool though, and there were lots of little kids who were competing.  Many boys spent all of their time at Naadam on horses, since almost everything was accessible from horseback.

I was back at our ger for a while.  My mom was really proud because I took a nap in the ger, she tells everyone that I slept in a ger now!

I went to the stadium to watch some wrestling.  It is really intense, but harder to see from farther away.  I think I like watching it on TV better, where you can see what is happening more up close.  

Hoosher being prepared.  It is so tasty!

My uncle or family friend (I'm not sure how he is related to me!) brought over some fruit called Cow's Eyes, and I ate a whole bunch of them.  They kind of taste like blueberries, and the trees they grow on are native to Mongolia.

My family dressed me up and had me shout in Mongolian, "come get hoosher!"  On accident, I kept saying, "Save the hoosher!" because the verbs sound really similar, and my family laughed at me a whole bunch.

My uncle/family friend/my new best friend.  He insisted we take this picture together.  He is super funny though, and put up with my broken Mongolian well.

The next day was Friday, the second day of national Naadam, which is a national holiday so everyone was off work and hanging out with their families.  My mom's sister's family before they headed back to Ulaanbaatar, where they live.  It was really great to meet them, and it was the first time in a while that I have lived with little kids.  That made me really grateful that my brother and sister are older!!

Shortly after this last photo was taken, I got violently sick. I was puking all over the place, and other unpleasant things I would rather not report in detail.  I was really sick until about 24 hours later, and didn't eat much for the whole weekend.  My family is now convinced that I lost all my fat (which makes no sense to me, I have shown them my pudgy parts but they are still not convinced), and so they have been feeding me extra to help me gain back my lost fat.  I appreciated the candy for breakfast, but I have to turn down large portions even more than before.  They are just watching out for me though, and its nice to know that if something happens they will be there for me!  In another post, I will tell you all about some of the Mongolian home medicine techniques I learned while I was sick!

For now, Баяртай! Дараа ульций! Goodbye!  See you later!

Adventures in Cooking Part 2: Scrambled Omelets!

My friends from Notre Dame can attest to the fact that I love omelets.  Every weekend brunch at South Dining Hall had an omelet to order bar, and whenever the line wasn't too long, I would always get an omelet.  Now, being on my own and being responsible for feeding myself, I have realized that omelets are easy and very good.  Here is one of my creations:

Yum!  I could eat omelets every day!

The past week has been pretty busy for me, as many of my classes have had the first round of tests and papers.  Next week and the week after are looking to be quite busy too, but I am enjoying the material, and that makes it worth the work.  For instance, I just wrote a short paper about how exposure to synthetic chemical pesticides in utero is correlated to decreased mental development--this might not seem like the happiest topic ever, but it is really interesting, and there doesn't seem to be much widespread acknowledgement about how man-made chemicals are monitored to prevent something like this.  It is an eye opening thought, that before we are even born, we are subjected to the modern world, and being altered by its presence.

This weekend won't be quite as entertaining--I get to spend lots of time studying for my upcoming biostatistics exam!

Adventures in Cooking part 1: Pad Thai

Hello friends!  I am starting a blog about my life adventures, and I must say, I am feeling a little adventure-less at the moment.  The most exciting things I have done lately (besides the great lectures I have had in class, but I will post about this later) are my cooking adventures.  I recently moved to an apartment in Pittsburgh, and there is no dining hall or mother to feed me.  My favorite dish so far was a delicious pad Thai recipe I found on Pinterest.  Here is the original recipe!  This is how my dinner turned out:

It was great!  The recipe made enough for three different meals--although I probably should have not waited five days to eat it for the last time....my stomach didn't really appreciate that.  My next plan is to make some tomato basil pasta, but that will have to wait until after the Notre Dame-Michigan game tonight!