Barbeque, Mongolian-style, summer 1999.

It's called "boodog." It the process whereby you cook the meat of an animal in its own skin, using hot stones as the heat source. In this case, it's a goat we were cooking.

Basically, after killing the animal, you peel the skin off. While this is going on, you heat some rocks in a fire. You clean the meat and bones, chopping up the meat, and putting it back into the skin. You can add stuff like potatoes and onions, if you have some. Mix in the hot stones. Then you close off the skin, and the heat from the stones cooks the meat.

If you are impatient, you can help it along from the outside with a blowtorch, like we did. The guy holding the goat skin on the right is an old friend and colleague of mine, another anthropologist.