My Own Private Albanian Breakfast
My Own Private Albanian Breakfast
Eggs in Albania
There’s one problem with vacations: they have to end. And like suntans, the memories fade too fast. But food is one way to bring the holiday home with you.
In June this year, I spent three weeks of long, lazy summer days in Europe but eventually I had to return to Melbourne in all its grey, mid-winter gloom. I swapped open-air cafes, beaches, and waterfalls for an open-plan office with harsh lighting and stuffy heating.
The unexpected highlight of this trip was Albania. The history, people, cafes, mountains, and of course, the food. Sweet juicy tomatoes, crisp green cucumbers and heart-stopping black coffee, exactly the way I like it.
After days of planes, trains, and furgons I stopped in Himare on the Albanian
Riviera, for three days of reading on white-pebble beaches alongside the refreshing, clear Aegean waters. My guest house overlooked the sea and each morning, my hosts laid out a spread in the communal kitchen of fresh bread, warm burek, local honey and jams, boiled eggs, and of course, black strong coffee. But no matter how glorious the crisp golden pastry of the burek looked and smelled, it wasn’t worth the belly aches. As someone with a gluten intolerance, I had to be a little more creative at breakfast.
On the first day, I made up my own little Albanian breakfast; hard-boiled eggs, slices of creamy feta, a splash of homemade olive oil, sprinkles of dried basil, salt, and pepper. It was a winner; the right mix of salty, creamy, and aromatic, and I ate my concoction every morning on the patio, under the vine-covered pergola gazing over the sea, never wanting to go home again. But eventually, Melbourne beckoned.
Once home, when I craved my Albanian breakfast, I started looking around for an alternative. But despite the culinary fusion of Melbourne’s cafes, I couldn’t find my made-up Albanian breakfast on any menu. The closest is the moreish “Macedonian breakfast” from a café in Thornbury with ajvar, poached eggs, feta, avocado, and bacon. It was up to me to recreate my Albanian breakfast. At least the ingredients were easy to find. I bought the best feta I could afford from the supermarket (Greek not Albanian), hard-boiled a few eggs, drizzled on my olive oil (Spanish not Albanian) and added herbs and spices.
While it wasn’t the same—the feta not as creamy, the olive oil not as grassy and fresh, the dried basil lacking the same oomph—the salty, crumbly texture of the feta with the hard-boiled eggs was enough to transport me back to the sunny patio of my guest house in Himare for a few moments and ignore the rain outside. And add a new breakfast to my home cooking repertoire.