Traditional Albanian Food

Hi all, I hope you are all doing well, and staying cool these hot summer days.

Most of my American friends have asked me what is an Albanian traditional food. One of the many I mention (I am not sure if we have only one specific traditional dish) is byrek. Many of my friends have tried this from me, and have witnessed as I have become better and better at it. When I first came to US, I didn't know how to make the whole thing from scratch (the filo dough), and I used to make it with store bought filo dough. Now, I feel I have gotten better at it and can actually make my own fresh filo dough.

As per request to a dear friend of mine here is a recipe for byrek.

Ingredients for homemade filo dough (If you are brave enough and want to try to make them from scratch)

4 cups of flour

2 cups of water

2 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon salt

After making it into dough, cover it and let it sit for about 1 hour. After that take the dough and separate it into about one inch balls. You will end up with about 16-19 balls.

I use a rolling pin to make the filo dough, some people use only their hands. It depends how you feel more comfortable working with the dough.

Ingredients if you don't want to worry about making your own filo dough

This is what I used to buy. You can find it in the frozen section next to the pies. It has two rolls of filo dough, each roll has 20 pieces. Depending how thick you want your byrek to be, you can use one or both rolls for one byrek.

For the filling there are endless options. Well, maybe not endless but many. This time I used these ingredients:

1 stick of butter melted

1/2 lb ground beef

2 yellow onions diced

1 can whole tomatoes

Seasonings of choice

Sometime I do spinach, egg, cheese, and yogurt, or just yogurt, egg, cheese etc.

Preheat oven to 400 F. Place 7 layers of filo dough in the bottom of a 9x13 pan (you want your bottom to be thick so that the mixture doesn't get through), then pour half of the mixture, then you place 5 more layers, and pour the other half of the mixture. Top it with 3 more layers. After every two layers of filo dough sprinkle some butter. This way after they bake they will be fluffy. Also, sprinkle some butter on top, especially on the edges but also in the middle, this will give it a brown color after it's baked. Bake for 20 minutes or until brown.

Here are some pictures from the most recent one I have made. Notice that my dough looks brown because I use whole wheat flour. Also, if you use store bought filo dough, yours will probably look better than mine, my dough came out a little bigger than the pan, however, mine is much tastier than yours. ;-)

Let me know if you try it or if you have any questions. 

Warmly,

Juliana