Shivit Oshi (Dill Noodles with Suzma and Meat Sauce)

Variations

• With spinach: swap half the dill for spinach and the colour deepens while the dill fades further. Spatzle has the same variation — "Blend cooked spinach into the dough for green noodles." — though there the spinach is cooked, and here it goes in raw.
• Fresh dill on top: for the bright dill note, scatter chopped dill over the plate. It adds what the dill in the dough does not give.
• With qatiq: the thinner fermented milk instead of suzma leaves the noodles sitting in the sauce, poured rather than tossed.
• With lamb: common in Khorezm. It renders more fat, so cut the oil in the qayla by a tablespoon.

Tips

• Boiling the dill with the noodle runs the delicate-herb order backwards. Fresh herbs files dill among the delicate herbs and describes them as "Thin, wet leaves that collapse on contact with heat." So the dill in lohikeitto goes in last. In shivit oshi it goes into the dough and spends three or four minutes in boiling water.
• So what it leaves is the background and the colour, not the top note. The same guide's opening applies directly: "The same handful of coriander stirred in at the start becomes a quiet background in the broth; scattered over the bowl at the end it is the loudest thing in the dish." This dish takes the start. The dill sits quietly under everything and the green stays in the noodle. If you want the top note as well, add it on the plate, as in the variation.
• Count the dill's water as the dough's water. The guide warns, of dishes that use herbs in bulk, that "Volume brings water with it and thins the liquid". In a broth that is a problem; in a dough it is water you had to add anyway. A 100g bunch brings a fair amount of it, so do not pour all the water in at the start — add it a spoonful at a time as you watch the dough.
• The noodles are rolled and cut, like kalguksu. The dough has to be stiff to roll to 2mm without tearing, which is also why the thick dill stems come out.
• Rinse, and let the suzma's body do the holding. Cooking noodles rinses when bounce is the point: "Cold water strips the surface starch and stops the cooking dead." That leaves no starch to hold a sauce, and the guide gives the answer with bibim-guksu: "A gochujang dressing clings by its own body rather than by emulsified starch". Suzma works the same way — a thick fermented milk that clings by its own body. So shake the noodles dry, and loosen the suzma only as far as a cream.
• Cold suzma and hot qayla share the plate. Tuxum barak, from the same Khorezm, serves a fermented milk with buttered dumplings and says that "the sourness carries the weight of the butter." Here the rich qayla is the weight, and the suzma's sourness carries it.