Chak-chak, öçpoçmaq and the tea that is refilled until you refuse three times

In a Tatar home the guest is fed before he is questioned. Refusing food outright is close to an insult; the correct manoeuvre is to accept, eat slowly, praise it, and decline the third refill with a hand on the heart. Expect to fail at this and to be fed anyway.

Öçpoçmaq — literally 'triangle' — is the national everyday pastry: lamb or beef, potato and onion, baked in a rich dough with broth poured through a hole in the top. Beside it come belesh and kystybyi, salma noodle soup, tokmach with goose, pilaf, and bread that is never wasted.

Meat is lamb, beef, horse and above all goose; pork is absent entirely, and a Tatar kitchen is halal without needing to say so.

Gubadiya is the layered ceremonial pie of the nikah and of major feasts: rice, red kort (dried sweetened cheese), raisins, dried apricots and egg, built up in strata and cut into narrow slices. Its presence tells you the occasion is serious.

Chak-chak is the celebration itself in edible form — fried strips of dough bound in hot honey and built into a tower, decorated with sweets, brought out for weddings, Eid and the arrival of important guests. Talkysh kaleve, honey and flour spun into threads and pressed into golden cones, is the delicate cousin.

Tea is the centre: strong black tea from a samovar, drunk with milk, honey, dried fruit and jam, refilled continuously. A Tatar celebration is entirely capable of running for six hours on tea alone.

Then the fermented milk drinks — katyk, thick and slightly sour, and ayran, salted and diluted for heat — both ancient, both cooling, both wholly halal. Add kvas, kompot, birch sap in spring, and honey water. Alcohol is not on the table; it is not missed.

Understand what it means. In this culture a wife's cooking is not servitude, it is authority: she decides who is welcomed, how the family is fed and what is passed to the next generation. Praising her gubadiya in front of her mother is worth more than jewellery.