I did another Migrateful live cookery session - Albanian this time. It still feels very good to get some kind of experience that's beyond my immediate surroundings, and also good to do something vaguely useful for people who have left their countries and are not having the easiest time getting settled somewhere else. As a lot of people have had reason to note in recent weeks, Ukraine gets the attention (naturally, rightly) but there's plenty more need.
I really didn't know what Albanian food would be like, and it turns out the menu today wasn't all that typical - there should have been loads of seafood, whereas this was quite chunky and more what I'd expect a smidge further north. But I can see why a nice pre-prep stew and some tasty pancakes seemed a bit easier than loads of fish.
A bit of a marinade for beef or mutton overnight (paprika, chilli, seasoning). Then, gulp, put it in cold water and bring to a hard boil, adding a grated carrot at some point. It's so weird to me not to brown and do the onions first for stew, but this is how Georgian dishes work too, even if it tastes completely different so I sort of gulped and continued.
Frying off two onions and plenty of garlic in a covered pan so it softens and caramelises, for aaaaaages. Bung a tin of tomatoes in, cook it up to boil and then combine all that into the beef-in-water.
Eat with something starchy. And bread. Or bread. Bread is important, is a thing I will remember about Albanian food.
Meanwhile, as the stew boiled hard, we made thick courgette pancakes. With a sort of jeopardy as Deshira the host told us all they had failed plenty of times before... if you don't do it really, really quick so that grated courgette doesn't leach all its water into the batter. Also cooked in the oven rather than fried as that's "safer" apparently (I think from a getting-edible-results pov rather than actual danger).
They are entertainingly piled up rather than little flat things, two tbsps vertically:
To serve ideally with tzatziki. If you had any doubt there was crossover the border with Greece, cease at once.
Anyway. It isn't wildly unexpected food, but it was unexpectedly constructed. And Deshira was great, and it was a cheerful way to spend early evening. Migrateful are doing in-person classes again now, in various London and south east locations (Canterbury included, fyi). But I like the online ones, bless this pandemic for having some upsides if you ignore absolutely all the important stuff.
Comments
Post a Comment