Last week, The Amazing Race featured a glistening soup made with chunks of sheep rump. Some contestants slurped. One gagged. A vegetarian tried but failed to take it down (thus losing out on a chance for the $1 million prize). And here at Pop Omnivore, we wondered. What is this dish all about? And what's up with using the backside?

First of all, a bit (more than what Borat taught us) about Kazakhstan. It is the ninth-largest country in the world. Its official language is Russian. Its state, or national, language is Kazakh. It is the world's seventh-largest producer of wheat. Its biggest city is Almaty, where the soup slurping took place, and the capital is Astana.

But what about its food?

Having never been there myself, and living in a city (and country, for that matter) that is sorely lacking in Kazakh restaurants, I've yet to get a taste. But I have learned that horse meat and sheep meat (aka mutton) are eaten in abundance, and that dumplings and pasta tend to round out most meals. The national dish is something called besparmak, which translates to "five fingers." It involves hunks of horse meat and noodles, and is meant to be eaten with the hands, hence the name. Another horse-derived favorite is a drink called kumis--this is fermented mare's milk. And then of course there is that soup. Recipes for it are elusive, but the star ingredient, as we know, is the back end of a sheep—specifically, a fat-tailed sheep. According to The Oxford Companion to Food, the tail on a fat-tail "may be a wide, beavertail-like flap, or a long kangaroo's tail with fat deposits along its length, or any intermediate shape. Among the world's hundreds of fat-tail breeds there are many odd curls, S-shapes, and wedges...the tail can be home to a substantial slab of fat with a texture somewhat like bacon, though of course with a muttony aroma."

That said, the soup is considered a delicacy, and I'm not one to knock another country's cuisine and pride therein. In fact, I'm curious about the taste and would love to read a recipe. Has anyone out there tried it? Can anyone share a recipe? May I please skip the fat-tail and just use bacon?

-Catherine Barker

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