More Balkan Food and our Albanian Cooking Class

I've been collecting food pictures for a second food-centric post and now is the time as Phillip and I finally were able to attend a cooking class yesterday. My earlier food post covered eating and drinking in our first four countries (Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia & Herzegovina), so I'll be starting this one with Serbian food. One of the common and tastiest foods was this simple tomato salad. The tomatoes throughout the Balkans tasted like the ones I grew, real tomatoes, not the cardboard ones from the grocery store. The cheese on the tomatoes was not as tangy as feta but had more flavor and texture than cream cheese. No dressing, just some green onions more as a garnish. 

Serbians know how to perfectly cook beef liver as well. We think this was sauteed in salted butter for exactly the right length of time. Delicious (for those who like liver!)

I've shown cevapi, the minced meat uncased sausages in the previous food post, but in Bulgaria, we had the minced meat formed into patties. This was pork, with a different seasoning than cevapi, no cumin flavor in the background. It was served with perfectly crisped sweet potato fries and tzatziki (yogurt, grated cucumber, dill) sauce.

Also in Sofia, we stopped at a cafeteria for lunch. Phillip had a chicken stew and I had Bulgarian moussaka, made with potatoes instead of eggplant but still with the traditional bechamel-type sauce. I ordered beet salad to go with it. The beet salad was grated raw beets so I did need to add some oil and vinegar to make it an actual salad. 

On to Skopje, North Macedonia, and back to cevapi. Throughout the Balkans, the cevapi was served with the red avjar sauce and with chopped onions.  

and beans and sausage for Phillip:

We didn't spend much time in Prizren, Kosovo, and one of the days we were there was a national holiday, so we were limited to restaurants in the more touristy area. Phillip had pizza, which was just like pizza anywhere. Prizren had restaurants that claimed to serve Mexican food, so I tried their chicken fajitas. It was strips of grilled chicken, onions, and peppers, but they missed on the fajita seasoning. Also, two of those bowl of sauce were mayonnaise-based sauces and the red one was pureed avjar, not salsa. Edible, but certainly not Mexican!

In Montenegro, we had the best desserts in Podgorica, for free. We ate dinner in our hotel because the view from the terrace was so good. We struck up a conversation with the waiter on our arrival day as we were eating early and were his only customers. He had spent several years as a waiter on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship so we had a great time talking with him. He noticed me writing in my journal because I had to move it when he brought my beer. On our final evening, he brought a lady over to speak with us. She was the hotel's general manager. Nice conversation with her, then she left to attend to business and our waiter brought us complimentary desserts from her, apple pie and chocolate cake. Phillip like the chocolate cake, but the apple pie was the standout for me. The texture of the crust was between a flaky American pie crust and the inside of a croissant. The apples were soft but not mushy, flavored with a bit of cardamom along with cinnamon.  

In Kotor, we had just one meal that was something different from grilled chicken or a green salad and that was when we made a meal of the appetizer plate. Prosciutto was outstanding as was the tomato. The highlights, however, were the cheeses, especially that scoop of what looks like butter. It was a buttery cream cheese that was delicious on the freshly baked bread.

Moving on to Budva, we again had great hotel food. Phillip ordered chicken and roasted potatoes and got half a chicken! Tender and juicy, bigger than a Cornish game hen, but small enough that he was able to eat it all without having eaten too much food.

Those roasted potatoes that came with his chicken were my favorite so he shared them with me that day. The next time we ate there, I had a caprese roll and a side order of those roasted potatoes. The potatoes were baby Yukon gold (or their version of that), boiled then deep fried with a sweet paprika coating. Crunch exterior, soft inside, perfectly seasoned. And my caprese roll looks like a flour tortilla around tomato and basil. It was not a tortilla; it was a sheet of mozzarella cheese encasing the tomatoes and basil with a balsamic glaze drizzled over the insides before they rolled it.

Now to Albania, the country we are in currently. In Shkoder, we went several times to a restaurant recommended by our hotel staff. Excellent beans and sausage for Phillip, but I ordered the traditional platter consisting of a cabbage roll, a layered pastry-like something (my least favorite on the plate), a stuffed pepper, a stuffed eggplant (my favorite), roasted potatoes and mixed roasted vegetables. The center held a bowl of cheesy, avjar-flavored spread that went well with the veggies. 

Another day in Shkoder, we ordered a platter that we shared because it was so much food. Five kinds of meat: sliced smoked sausage, cevapi, a patty of seasoned ground meat, three pieces of grilled chicken, and grilled hot dogs (that tasted just like American hot dogs), cheese, and an entire plate of French fries. Note the black dog to the right of the French fries. He was a good boy who just laid beside the table and thumped his tail on the ground when we spoke to him. He got a few of those hot dogs after we ate our fill of the food. 

Here in Tirana, we ate once at our hotel but were not a fan of the food as it seemed greasy. I found a restaurant about a kilometer away that had good reviews, and it lived up to the reviews. Phillip, now a connoisseur of Balkan baked beans, enjoyed their version, made with large lima beans and chunks of sausage. 

I ordered a pepper casserole and a pickled cabbage salad. Delicious, but not what I was expecting. The cabbage was a cross between fresh cabbage and sauerkraut (I like both those things). I thought the pepper casserole was red peppers and cheese, until we went to our cooking class yesterday and I learned how the sauce is made. No cheese. More on that when I walk thru the class. The casserole was also delicious.

We looked on-line for a cooking class in each city we visited. I did not find one until here in Tirana, learning to cook three Albanian dishes, a traditional main dish, their version of burek, and a dessert. Eleven students with the others from the Netherlands, Sweden, Scotland, and England. Sindhi, our instructor, spoke excellent English and ensured that all the students were hands-on during the class. She provided unlimited home-made wine (her father makes it at his home in southern Albanian). 

We started preparing the main dish, tave kosi, first as it had to cook longest in the oven. Phillip was on meat-chopping duty. Boiled beef, which he is carrying to be covered with sauce. I was on sauce duty, and here's where I learned how to make that traditional sauce that covered the peppers and that will cover this meat. Butter and flour to make a roux, add water from boiling the beef. Add yogurt followed by eggs for thickening it even more. Seasoned with paprika and garlic powder. We whisked the sauce until it came to a boil and thickened, then it was ladled onto the meat in those ceramic dishes, fully covering the meat pieces. As it cooked in the oven, the sauce got even thicker, so it seemed like cheese when finished! One of the students was vegetarian, so we also made a meatless version with red peppers and a different sauce. Phillip got to stir the sauteing peppers. 

With the tave kosi in the oven, we worked on the Albanian burek. It did not use filo dough, rather we made the dough ourselves, so it was thicker than filo. 

The filling was spinach and cheese. We chopped and cooked the water out of the spinach before adding a feta-type cheese to fill the burek. This is a pie-shaped burek, with the filling between two layers of the dough we made. Phillip is crimping the edges before it went in the oven to bake.

We also made Albanian cookies. Not a lot of sugar in the dough because they were drenched with a cinnamon sugar water solution after baking.

The tave kosi came out of the oven to cool while the burek baked.

When the burek came out of the oven, Sindhi sprinkled each with a bit of water then covered them with a towel to soften the crust.

And our food was all finished, so it was time to eat the fruit of our labors! The tave kosi, with its yogurt-bechamel type sauce, tasted like it was covered with a cheesy sauce. The bowl with red-colored food in it to the left is the vegetarian main dish, red bell peppers in a sauce. All delicious, especially with the wine! 

Phillip and I had a great time with a wonderful instructor and really pleasant classmates. We will make the tave kosi at home, but I think I'll find out how to make the northern Balkans burek with the filo dough, as we like that better than Albanian burek. 



 

 

Albanian Highlights, so far

Phillip and I are in Tirana, Albania, our second Albanian city. Before we left Shkoder, Albania, we took an all-day tour to Theth National Park, traveling about 50 miles northwest of Shkoder in a van with a guide, Renalto, and five other visitors. Renalto drove from Shkoder into the Albanian Alps, with our first stop at the highest point in Albania. 

view thru the Albanian Alps from the high point

At that viewpoint, we saw structures built over the road. Renalto said they were to slow down rockslides and to protect cars during avalanches in the winter. 

structures over the road in rockslide/avalanche areas

Our route took us under the structures. The road had dozens of switchbacks as we traveled up and down the mountains. In addition to maneuvering the switchbacks, Renalto had to be alert for animals.

one of the cows walking on the road 

The highlight of the trip was our walk to Theth's Blue Eye, a pool of blue water in the mountain. The six-mile hike (climb!) began across the river from where Renalto parked our van, in the village of Nderlysaj. The picture is Renalto leading us across a walk bridge made of wooden slats. Phillip and I were enough ahead of the rest of our group as we crossed the bridge, that he, behind me, started bouncing on the bridge. When I heard him giggling as I frantically grabbed the handrails, I realized what was happening. 

Once we began the climb up the mountain, and it was quite a climb, Phillip didn't kid around with me but made sure I was OK as the path became narrow and high. 

view back toward our start, but only about 1/5 of the way to Blue Eye

Our trek took us up and down a walking trail. The site I booked the tour on called it "moderate." Another site called it "moderately challenging." I guess if you are 35 years old and in excellent physical condition, it may indeed be only "moderate." For two 67-year-olds, in decent but not great shape, it was strenuous. We did make it and saw Theth's Blue Eye. 

Blue Eye: some visitors swam, the water was 7 degrees C, 44 degrees F

About 2/3 of the way on the trail, a man in a small shack sold bottles of water, quite reasonable at 100 lek ($1.15) each; we would have paid much more for it! We had seen piles of horse manure on our climb up the mountain. On our way back, we saw the maker of the piles who was also the transport for the water:

carried the water up the mountain trail

As we returned to the trailhead, we noticed the skies began to darken to our north. At the bottom, looking back toward where we had been, we could see rain. 

Just as we made it to a covered resttaurant area near the trailhead, the rain began. While we ate lunch, the rain continued. Renalto drove to our next stop, a waterfall, but the rain had made it unsafe for us to clamber down the hill to the waterfall, so we had to skip it. We stopped at a church where a priest in olden times had created the Albanian language. Some of our fellow travelers went into the church, but we didn't. Renalto turned the van back toward Shkoder, retracing the route up into the Albanian Alps and back down toward town. 

A boulder on the narrow mountain road

The Theth tour was the best activity we did in Shkoder. The day after the tour, we took the bus to Tirana, the capital city of Albania. Five euro ($5.75) per person for a two-hour bus ride! We did splurge once we arrived at the Tirana bus station for a taxi ($17) to our hotel (20-minute drive). The bus station area was under construction and walking to the city bus stop to continue via bus would have been very hot, dusty, crowded, and stressful. 

Our hotel is about a kilometer north of the city's center, Skanderbeg Square (Skanderbeg was the Albanian military commander who led the successful rebellion against Ottoman rule in the 1400s). While I was in school and college, Albania, under their leader, Enver Hoxha, was as closed as North Korea is today. In the years since his death in 1985, Albania has really opened up and welcomed international investment and interest. Phillip and I saw this in the buildings and construction viewed from Skanderbeg Square:

It looks like a face!

Tricolor high-rise building

Today, we rode the city bus (40 lek =$0.47, per person, for a 32-minute bus ride) to the cable car that took us up the nearby mountain. No fortress at the top, only views. The best views, however, were from the cable car as we ascended and descended the mountain.

bunkers in the mountainside, viewed from the cable car

Tirana city in the distance

good supports!

another bunker seen in the hillside seen during cable car descent

In the same neighborhood as the cable car's lower station was the Bunk Art'1 facility. Although called a bunker, it was more like an extensive bomb shelter. 

This bomb shelter was built into the mountain during 1973-74

Hoxha built this bomb shelter to be his command center when the Western powers dropped nuclear bombs on Albania. Hoxha was a paranoid leader who, starting in 1971, had over 170,000 bunkers built throughout Albania because of his fear of nuclear attack from the Western powers. The exhibits in Bunk Art'1 included rooms with mock-ups of what they contained when built:

a living room in the living quarters area 

communications equipment of the early 1970s

One of the rooms included displays of gas masks as Albanians at the time were all trained on the use of gas masks because mustard gas deployment was another fear of the Hoxha administration. Even the horses had gas masks ready for them:

As we walked thru the bomb shelter, I had no problem going thru the doors. Phillip had to duck, but he did forget to crouch down once. Just once.

"Mind your head" as you walk thru the halls said the signs

When we reached the exit, the final door wasn't just a metal door. It was a six-inch thick concave concrete door. 

curved door and its curved doorstop

Tomorrow, we have a cooking class! Yay! I've been looking for them throughout our trip and this is actually the first one I've found at a reasonable cost. I spoke with a tour guide who said that they did not reappear after Covid stopped tourism. So sad, but at least I found this one for Albanian dishes. 

Two fortress cities: Kotor and Budva, Montenegro

We visited the Adriatic coast again, this time in Montenegro's coastal areas. We traveled from Podgorica, in the interior of Montenegro, to Kotor. We spent four nights in Kotor before going by bus about an hour south to the town of Budva. Both Kotor and Budva have seaside fortresses. Kotor, however, also had a cruise ship pier and that meant crowds of people. In Kotor, we were fortunate to get a room in a hotel within the Kotor fortress walls!

our hotel had formerly been the old town hall

Even with the crowds of people, we enjoyed walking around and in the fortress. 

We could walk along the top of a portion of the fortress wall

narrow, cobblestone alleys inside the fortress

In addition to exploring the fortress, a major activity in Kotor is to take a speedboat ride to see the attractions in Kotor Bay. Although I'm not a fan of speedboats, we did take the 3-hour tour. I sang the Gilligan's Island theme song to Phillip before we departed, but our boat had eight passengers, not five, who "set sail that day for a three-hour tour." 

Our first stop was a submarine tunnel, an actual man-made cave from the 1950s, used by Yugoslav submarines to avoid detection from the West.  Three tunnels, interconnected when they were in use, dotted the rock shoreline.

wire held rocks over the entrance to disguise it from the air

Our boat was small enough to go into the tunnel and turn around.

inside the submarine tunnel, looking out

We went past, but did not stop at, a former prison island, Mamula Island. A fortress was built on it in 1853 and during WWI and WWII, the fortress was used as a prison. In 2016, an Arab sheik bought it from Kotor and turned it into a luxury resort. 

former prison fortress, now luxury resort

Our next stop on our boat tour was at Blue Eye, a cave where the water seems extraordinarily blue.

After stopping inside the cave for pictures, the boat anchored just outside the cave for passengers to swim if they wanted to. I chose not to as it meant jumping off the perfectly good boat and climbing back up the side of the boat. Phillip did go for his swim in the Adriatic Sea.

Phillips swimming beside the boat at the Blue Eye cave

Our boat headed back toward Kotor as we were just outside the Bay when we stopped at Blue Eye. 

Our last stop was at Our Lady of the Rocks, a man-made island in the bay with a church. We got off the boat for pictures here, but Phillip and I didn't pay to go into the scenic church. 

On our next day in Kotor, we escaped the crowds of tourists by heading up the goat trail behind the Kotor Fortress. 

beginning of the trail up the hill

We could have paid 15 euros each to use the steps to go directly up the hill to viewpoint, but many travel blogs and guidebooks relate that the goat trail is free; well-maintained; and an easier, more gradual climb.

view from about 1/4 of the way up the trail

We made it about halfway to the top of the mountain before I wanted to stop, not because it was too steep or hard to climb, but because the trail had no defined edge. Not being a fan of heights, I was quite anxious when walking right next to the drop-off. We were on the switchbacks shown in the next picture when we headed back down. The trail wound to the back side of the mountain, so the view of the sea diminished the higher we walked, and that sea view had been the reason for going up the trail.  

We left Kotor for Budva, only an hour away but with a lot fewer tourists blocking the sidewalks and fortress alleys. The trip took the full hour even though the distance was only 15 miles. Workers were widening the road so we had construction delays for almost the entire journey. We had a nice hotel for our stay in Budva but the wifi would not support uploading pictures, so this post is being competed in Albania. 

While in Budva, we visited its fortress, directly on the sea.

Budva had a boardwalk that went north and south from the fortress. On the day we visited the fortress, we walked south until the boardwalk ended. 

At the end of the boardwalk, people (not us!) were jumping off the rocks into the sea. 

looks like he'll hit the rocks, but he didn't

On our final day in Budva, we walked north on the boardwalk and stopped for a few hours at a beach. For ten euros, we rented two chairs and a beach umbrella for the entire day. We only stayed a few hours. The weather was perfect and the beach umbrella was big enough to keep the sun off of us. The water was cold, but I did go out and swim in the Adriatic Sea! 

We left Budva and returned to Shkoder, Albania. This visit, we stay for three nights and see the city and the area. I was more careful selecting our bus to get here, ensuring that it dropped passengers in the city center, not two miles away like the bus from Kosovo to Shkoder did. We were dropped of a block from our hotel this time, much better!