#2 Albania
For our second exploration, we headed towards lovely Albania. We made 4 dishes:
Shapkat, a corn flour pie with spinach and feta inside. This recipe called for “corn flour” which is what it said on the outside of a package of masa I bought, but it’s possible that I should have used corn meal instead of masa. It was tasty with masa, but I’d be willing to try it again with corn meal to see if it was even better.
Fasule, a tomato-bean soup. I was concerned that this recipe was under-seasoned. (Who adds just a pinch of paprika to a whole pot of soup?), and indeed when I tasted it after an hour, it was very bland, so I added wine, balsamic vinegar, salt, hot sauce, and pepper and let it cook another 30 minutes before serving. We also ate the cooked-down leftovers a few days later as a part of an English breakfast.
Fergesë e Tiranës me piperka, a baked feta and pepper spread that was absolutely delicious with crusty bread. Here’s the recipe we used.
A tomato and cucumber salad, like this, except my cooking assistant refused to add the called-for onions.
The Shapkat, fresh out of the oven.
The Fergesë e Tiranës
Salad.
Note the conspicuous lack of onions.
There was no feta in the soup, but we used 1.75 pounds of it among the other 3 dishes.
The complete plate for Albanian night!
