After two months of living in Albania on behalf of Pioneer Media, my time is literally just about at the end, so whilst I have written about Albanian Cuisine and of course the top 7 dishes to try in Albania (amongst others, my next travels with take me away from Albania, and thus onto other cuisines.
I have therefore decreed that my last Albanian food blog will about Kackavall and in particular the baked variety.
Kackavall is a yellow cheese familiar to the Balkans and southern Italy. It is a salty cheese that is served in several varieties traditionally as an entrée.
It can either served as a regular cheese, fried, as a salad, or baked. Forget what anyone tells you, baked Kackavall is the absolute shit.
To largely sum up the dish and how it is served, the yellow cheese is literally baked until it melts, various peppers or onions are added, and then you are served one of the most genius meals ever to have been invented in the world, a plate of liquid melted salty cheese. I’ll add that I discovered this whilst doing the keto diet, and holy mackerel is a dish of melted cheese rather keto-friendly!
As stated previously it is traditionally served as an entrée, and you eat it almost like a soup (really nothing wrong with that), but one little hack I discovered was to by Qofte (the Albanian meatballs), and then dip the meatballs into said dish of melted cheese to really get your delicious keto Albanian food culinary masterpiece.
Qofte would be another staple Albanian food, I really got involved with the small sausage-like meatballs costing 30 cents each.
Of course, combine this with some Albanian Wine or Rakia at the Amazonia Taverna, and you have every ingredient for a great night sampling the Tirana nightlife.