Chekchek? Check

One of the most surprising things in central Asian cuisine is the confection called chekchek , which is made by both the Tatars living directly east of Moscow and the Uzbeks, whose country is far to the southeast, bordering on Afghanistan. Chekchek is laboriously built up of tiny fried balls of dough, molded together with honey-flavored sugar syrup. The whole thing is often garnished with glazed walnuts and grapes or sugar comfits.

In short, it’s little puffy grain balls in a sticky coating--a close equivalent of good old Rice Crispies squares. Except that you can’t start out by buying a box of breakfast cereal. You have to create all the little puffy grain balls yourself.

“I’ve made chekchek ,” says Turan-Mirza Kamal, “but it’s a lot of work. You really need two people. One person cuts the pieces and drops them in the oil, and the other takes them out.” The chekchek for this meal was made for him by a Tatar woman living in Burlingame, Calif.

In China, much the same confection is known under the name saqima (the Chinese q is pronounced like ch in English). Saqima is not a Chinese word, however. It apparently comes from sachi , the verb “to cut” in the language of the Manchus, who ruled China from 1644 to 1912, but some connection with Central Asia is not at all out of the question.

The Tatars also make a cousin of chekchek from fresh spaghetti-like noodles, briefly fried. They call it Bukhara kalewe , the Bukharan dessert.