Albania - Gjelle Me Mish dhe Patata

Albania

Tjeta!

So it had been a few days and I was still scouring the internet for an authentic Albanian soup recipe. Albanian cuisine, like that of Afghanistan, has yet to fill the bistros and cafes of Ventura Blvd. In fact, even Yelp had betrayed me - bringing up exactly zero Albanian Restaurants for reference in a search spanning 7 major counties in Southern California from way down south in San Diego all the way up to Santa Barbara! It was kind of mind-boggling to me! Living in Los Angeles, you get used to there being every culture known to man right out your front doorstep! There are believed to be an incredible 224 different identified languages spoken in our city, not including differing dialects! ¹ Yet, with all of that not a single Albanian restaurant in the Greater Los Angeles area. Wow.
Even on the Googles, finding an Albanian Soup Recipe in English is proving to be a difficult task! I am getting flashbacks from Taken, where the Albanian kidnappers challenge Liam Neeson's kickass threats with a gruff and thickly accented "Good Luck."

Good Luck.

...Wait - this probably does not paint a great picture of Albanians! I am going to go out on a limb and say that Albanians are probably not all kidnappers hanging out at Parisian airports, waiting for a dumb, ill-traveled American teenager. In fact, I learned in my research that the Mother Theresa was Albanian! Mother freaking Theresa! While she was born in Macedonia and lived most of her life in India, she was of Albanian parents! There's no way Liam Neeson would beat up Mother Theresa!

But I digress.

After exhausting all my recipe options in English, I asked a source who pointed me in the direction of Gjelle me Mish. One quick google search and out come page after page of Albanian website on top of Albanian website. 5 years ago this may have been the end of my search, but with today's technology it didn't take me long to realize I had hit the motherload! I mean, could it get any more authentically Albanian than a recipe that comes from...Albania?
Our soup today comes from none other than real life Albanian website - A fellow blogspot website, at that! - kuzhinalme.al. (Now, I'm no expert, but I am guessing Khuzina means kitchen! Go Language!)

Gjelle me Mish dhe Patata

Ingredients

• 4 TBSP Oil
• 300-400 g. Beef
• 4 Potatoes
• 2 Carrots
• 2 Onions
• 3 Tomatoes
• Salt, Pepper, Oregano

Procedure

1. Heat Oil in Stock Pot, Sear Beef, lightly salted and peppered. Cook for 5-10 minutes until beef is braised on all sides.
2. Add onions and cook on high for 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Add potatoes, onions, tomatoes and spices. (I used about 1.5 TBSP salt, 2 TBSP Pepper and maybe 1 TBSP Oregano.) Add water until ingredients are covered. (This came to be about 7-8 Cups of Water.)
4. Heat on Medium for 40-50 mins. Soup is done when meat is soft and soup is thickened.

The least crazy I have ever seen Super King!

And then there I was, the day before payday and jonesing for a new soup! The ingredients seemed pretty cheap. My debit card had $15.00 on it and I had left my credit card and ID in my flipbelt after yesterday's race. (Confession: I leave my cards and ID in my flipbelt after every race. I love my flipbelt, but I swear it will be the death of me! Or maybe just my shopping habits.) I couldn't even ask my bank for money at this point without proper identification, and was praying I wouldn't get pulled over!

So I figured maybe I could try the Super King market just outside of the office. Super King is that market I mentioned earlier: Full of ethnic housewives with old world values each pushing each other out of the way in order to get their families' dinners on the table as soon as possible! You don't go into Super King without a plan. And you don't come out without being on the verge of a panic attack. This is not the place for shopping and discovery. You are on a mission. You are in. You are rude. You are out. If you went in thinking there was another way, chances are you are still inside Super King, traumatized because you have seen things and you are now cowering in a corner rocking back and forth waiting for the Red Cross to come and save your ass. They are not coming. Get out and get out now. (I went 3 days before hosting my first Thanksgiving. I had my list, I had my cart and I was

All ingredients used, all for under $7.50!

not afraid to use it. 18 minutes and $22 dollars later, I had all the produce for my entire Thanksgiving meal! It was quite possibly one of the proudest days of my life, rivaling the actual hosting of my first Thanksgiving.) So my mission that day was to get in and out, in 15 minutes or less, spending $15 or less while getting all the necessary ingredients for my soup. I took a peek at the weekly circular and the odds seemed in my favor. While I had given myself vague product-by-product estimates for each item at say a Vons or Ralph's supermarket, those number were - let's face it - arbitrary. Groceries at mainstream markets are priced to sell one week and skyhigh the next! But Super King, Super King looked good. White Onions for 25-cents a pound, Beef Shoulder for $3.99 per pound. With ingredients like olive oil, salt, pepper and oregano already on hand, I figured Super King was worth a shot.

Victory!

15 minutes later and $7.50 lighter, I had everything I needed for my soup! To top things off, it was the quietest I had ever seen that market and I had no need for a Xanax! The only complaint was with the miserable security guard at the front door, but I'll try to save that complaint for Yelp. After all was said and done, it was not too shabby of a visit!

I got home and got straight to chopping my ingredients! As the oil heated I cut up the beef into more manageable pieces, nervous because I have never cooked "Beef Shoulder Clod" before. In fact, I am almost exclusively a rib eye gal if I am being completely honest. Throwing the beef into the stock pot's hot oil, I decided to add a little bit of salt and pepper to the braising process. I didn't want to be put off with the smell of plain meat cooking like I was with the Shorwa-E-Gosht of Afghanistan!

All ingredients, waiting for water.

While it did not say to add salt and pepper at this step in the recipe, it didn't say not to. In fact it didn't even say how much of which spice to put in the soup! So I figured, maybe in some Albanian kitchen, there is somebody adding salt and pepper to their Gjille me Mish beef and it made me feel better. After the beef had seared the onions were added to the pot at about high heat and stirred occasionally so that that wouldn't burn to the bottom. Finally I added the rest of the ingredients, Salt (~1.5-2 Tbsp.), Pepper (~2 Tbsp.) and Oregano (~1 Tbsp.) to taste, water to cover the rest of the ingredients (~8 Cups) and brought to a boil. Once my soup was boiling I added a lid and reduced to a simmer for about 50-60 minutes, or until the potatoes were soft and the broth had a little substance to it. Now I am not going to lie; I am always panicking about something. So after 20 minutes when I sampled my soup water and it still tasted like, well, water, I was a little nervous! But decided to give it another 20 minutes before I tasted it again. It tasted like water. Again. At this point I sprinkled a little more salt and a little more pepper and oregano into the mix. After a final 20 minutes on the stove, the soup had worked its magic! The extra spices and the strachy runoff from the approximately billion potatoes that had been added had made this soup come to life!

Albania, I am sorry I doubted your soup.

I loved it! It was still super easy to make; In fact, I think the hardest part of this adventure is going to be the fact that I have no clue what I am doing with all the unfamiliar recipes. I have an idea of what things might look like if a recipe comes with a picture, but I have no idea what they are supposed to smell like or taste like! All in all, I was pleasantly surprised that this soup ended up with actual flavor, instead of just tasting like carrot-potato water like it did in the beginning. If I were to do it again, I would probably use 2-2.5 lbs of beef. I feel like with all the volume of this soup, I was afraid of a disproportional distribution of beef and in my first bowl and ended up only serving myself 2 little pieces.

Join me next time when we head to Algeria with Chorba Frik, a Ramadan staple! Shëndet!

My first bowl of Gjelle Me Mish dhe Patata

If you have figs in your knapsack, everyone will want to be your friend. - Albanian Proverb

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