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Albania: Just the Recipes

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  Albania: Fasulle and Freedom Lakror (Rustic Albanian Leek & Cheese Pie) Dough 3½ cups all-purpose flour 1¼ cups warm water 1 tsp salt 2 tbsp olive oil Filling 3 leeks, thinly sliced 1½ cups feta or Albanian white cheese, crumbled 2 tbsp olive oil Freshly ground black pepper, to taste Instructions In a large bowl, mix flour and salt. Gradually add warm water and knead until smooth and soft (8–10 minutes). Drizzle with olive oil, cover, and rest for 30 minutes. Divide dough into 3–4 equal balls. Roll each very thinly (almost translucent). Heat olive oil in a pan and sauté leeks until soft and sweet (8–10 minutes). Season with black pepper and set aside. Lightly oil a baking pan. Layer 1–2 sheets of dough, brushing each lightly with oil. Spread leek filling evenly, then scatter crumbled cheese on top. Cover with remaining dough layers, brushing with oil between each. Seal edges well and brush top generously with oil. Bake at 400°F (205°C) for 35–45 minutes until golden and cris...
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Albania: Fasulle and Freedom

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  Albania: Fasulle and Freedom Albania is an ancient land of mountains and coasts, of stone villages clinging to hillsides and port cities facing the Adriatic, a place shaped as much by isolation as by invasion. Of note, long one of the only majority Muslim countries in Europe, for centuries it stood at the edge of empire; Ottoman, Italian, fascist, communist, absorbing pressure from every direction while developing a fiercely local culture of survival. Long before Albania emerged as a nation-state in 1912, its people had already learned to endure without one. Peasants baked bread beneath ashes, shepherds carried cornmeal into the highlands, artisans fed each other from shared pots in city courtyards. Food was never abundance; it was continuity. In a society where institutions were distant or hostile, kitchens, ovens, and street stalls became forms of collective mutual aid. The early twentieth century opened not with independence, but with revolt. As Ottoman authority collapsed, A...
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