Winter Soup in Baku (Xac)

A culinary favourite during the cold snaps in Azerbaijan is a soup called “Xac” (pronounced like “Hash”). It’s made from boiled bones. Nothing accompanies it other than Vodka (which one self administers all night prior to, and at the same time as, ladling this warm glue down one’s throat). If a smell were a taste, then I’d say Xac has a “barn-yard” flavour. They say it improves if you add salt, vinegar and fresh garlic. After my first sip I tried this (enthusiastically), and agree entirely. When something tastes like barn-yard it has to improve, no matter what you add to it.



Local instructions, after Xac consumption, are to go home, get under the covers and hibernate in the spoon-position with one’s wife all day. On an early Saturday morning in winter, following all-night Vodka drinking to celebrate the departure from Baku of Matt and Seva, I arrived home smelling of garlic and barnyard, and then explained these local instructions to Chris.

I was most surprised to find that I hibernated alone, undisturbed even by our three cats. However I did notice that Xac tremendously improved my powers of endurance in Baku’s famous Bath houses. Little Western boys like me are normally the last guy into a sauna and the first one out. Following our night of Xac consumption, Matt, Niall and I outlasted even the hardiest of Baku’s sauna-goers.