97° here in Bishkek at lunch time. I stop by Империя пицца (Pizza Empire) for a bite. On the menu is a soup called ашлям-фу "ashlyam-fu," supposedly a cold, spicy soup. Now mind you, I'm from AZ. It's rare for me to find something that I actually consider spicy outside of an Indian or Thai restaurant, or maybe sometimes a Chinese restaurant. Even Mexican food is bland for me. But cold spicy soup kind of sounds good today. I order it. Well, I'll be damned. It actually is somewhat spicy. Imagine a cold broth with a fairly watery hot-pepper and tomato taste. Mix in thinly sliced cucumbers, carrots and bell peppers and noodles that are almost as thick as udon noodles. Then there is this stuff that looks like sliced tofu, which turns out to be a starch gel (either mung bean or potato or corn starch) that has solidified to cuttable consistency. This soup is actually pretty good. I would make something like this back in Phoenix... well, minus the noodles and starch... It turns out that it is not a Kyrgyz dish, but a Dungan one. (No, don't ask me who the Dungans are. That's what you have Wikipedia for.) If you read Russian, here is a nice reference for the dish (mirror).