Some Kazakh friends invited me over for "tea" on Saturday which turned into a five hour long extravaganza! I arrived and the table was set like this, laden with salad, different kinds of fruits, nuts and, of course, the obligatory horse meat. (We were served kazi, which is a kind of smoked horse sausage). After this first course, we were then served a type of meat pie, followed a few hours later by beshparkmak. I hadn't known about the beshparkmak (I thought we were done!) so I was struggling mightily even before the dessert, which was a cake that the hostess, Asel, had baked herself. Beshparkmak is considered the traditional Kazakh dish. (As plov is to the Uzbeks, beshparkmak is to the Kazkahs). In Kazakh, 'beshparkmak" literally means five fingers. Traditionally, the dish should be eaten with your fingers to enjoy it the most (although I have never seen anyone do it). Beshparkmak consists of homemade noodles (about the width of lasagna noodles) topped with meat--on special occasions it is horse, but lamb is more common-- onions and a mixture of spices.