Uzbekistan

Find a plov master at his cauldron in the morning and you've found the soul of Uzbek food. In a metre-wide kazan he layers rice, mutton, carrots cut into matchsticks and whole heads of garlic, coaxing it for hours until the grains gleam separate and gold. It's cooked for weddings, for guests, for Sunday — osh is generosity you can eat, and Samarkand and Ferghana will argue forever about whose is best.

Around it turns the whole Silk Road pantry. Round non bread, stamped in patterns and baked against the tandoor wall, is treated as sacred — never placed upside-down. There's lamb-stuffed manti steamed in trays, hand-pulled lagman noodles in broth, flaky samsa baked till the meat inside runs. Green tea is poured constantly, the first cup returned to the pot three times for luck. Eat in a Bukhara courtyard under mulberry trees and the caravan cities suddenly make sense.