Time for another foray into Albanian cuisine!
Fergese (fried curd) turns up on the dinner table in all sorts of guises. My favourite is made with carrots, red peppers, garlic and olives mulched up in the food processor, mixed into the gjize (pronounced ‘geeze’) and fried. I’ve even had it at a restaurant with chunks of chicken in it. I don’t have a food processor so we’re sticking to a simple version which was shown to me by my brother-in-law Berti.
Ingredients:
- Gjize (curd or cottage cheese)
- Speca (peppers – red & green)
- Hudhra (fresh garlic)
- Gjalp (butter)
- Qumesht (milk)
- Vaj (oil)
Slice and dice the speca and hudhra and soften up in a frying pan with a big chunk of gjalp.
Add the gjize to the frying pan. Use only what you’ll think you’ll eat straight away because its best served fresh from the pan. We probably used a quarter of the amount of gjize shown in the photo above.
Continue to fry the mixture. Add a dollop of milk and some vaj. Fry a little longer and then its good to go. Totally yum with chunks of fresh bread! Hubby said my fergese was really good – so that’s a total Albanian housewife win! Woo hoo!
A year in Albania 
Looks good. I really love those pale green horn-shaped peppers: we get them at the the Turkish grocer’s here, although a friend of ours whose parents came from southern Italy uses them in a fried pepper dish. Interesting that there’s garlic but no onion. Do you make the cottage cheese/curd or buy it? I shall look forward to sampling this. Loving these culinary moments!
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This particular gjize came from a shop but it’s also made on the family farm. We’re heading out there next week for a few days – I’ll try and get a lesson on making it!
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