Hi Everyone - back again with my daily blog on relevant and not so relevant stories and anecdotes for this year's sailing from Corfu to Venice. Hope you all received all my travel brochure with the necessary details (you find it on the menu under travel plans).
This year's blog starts with Albanian food. Albania has a quite distinctive cuisine even though it shares a very long border with Greece. The typical sea food and olive oil based dishes we remember from Greece and Turkey are still present but are now complemented with hearty food from the mountains. Stews, soups, pies, stuffed vegetables, meat balls and grilled chicken join the menu.
Albania was for centuries a thinly populated and poor region through which people often travelled but seldom stayed. People lived in isolated villages in the Albanian mountains and had to make a living from what was growing locally. Cultivating small, often steep fields and herding were the main agricultural activities. There was never enough food for everybody which made the country the perfect recruiting ground for the Ottoman army. There were many prominent Albanians in Ottoman services. In a way it is quite similar to Switzerland.
It is thus no surprise that stews and soups (call it watered down stews) appear on the menu. Both are very efficient in extracting nutritions from meat, grains and vegetables and only require a pot and a source of heat. Albania always had enough fire wood. A herd in a small Albanian house was ideally suited for this type of cooking. Stews have a long tradition. They date back to around 8'000 BC and evolved simultaneously in different places at the same time. Could not find any specific evidence for Albanian stews though. But we know that they were wide spread in the Persian Empire (which never extended to Albania).
So what has become with these ancient traditions?
Fëgesë - peppers, tomatoes and onions simmered with cottage cheese - is a typical mountain lunch eaten with hard bread which softens when dipped. Until quite recently, fresh bread was a luxury which ordinary people could not afford. Farmers baked once a month. Bread had to be broken with a wooden hammer and was eaten dipped in milk or stews.
Tavë Kosie (Lamb Pie) was made with lamb, eggs, yoghurt and rice and apparently tastes like a French Quiche. Never had one thus it is definitely on the "to-eat-list" for the trip
Qofte (Meat Balls) are made from mince lamb. Sheep are much easier to herd in the mountains than cattle and thus dominate the Albanian cuisine. This dish is usually served with or on a bed of salad, the omnipresent bread or rice
Byrek (spinach and cheese pie) - most people believe that this is a Turkish dish. However its origins date back to Roman if not Greek times when the pie was called Cheese Plazenta. Byrek is a Turkish word though and you find this dish everywhere in Turkey too.
The list would not be complete without mentioning the sea food dishes which often come with a flavour of Italian cuisine. Italian merchants were always present on the Albanian coast and Albania was from 1939 to 1943 an Italian protectorate (Mussolini occupied it)