Two months ago, I cycled 2,000 kilometres on ancient Roman roads from Sicily to Istanbul, crossing Italy, Albania, Macedonia, northern Greece and Turkey. As a chef, I wanted to explore my Italian culinary heritage and see how it connects with other cultures in the Mediterranean basin. In the past few columns I shared my culinary journey through southern Italy; today I will take you across the Adriatic, heading east.
"Our food culture constantly changes. What our grandparents ate is different to what their grandparents ate, and to what we eat now," says chef Gerti Zebel of Real Scampis, a restaurant inside the city castle of Elbasan, Albania. "My grandmother cooked almost everything in two fingers of oil; now we don't do that. After communism, we learned about nutrition and healthier cooking techniques."
While cooking is now lighter, Zebel wonders why obesity is increasing in Albania. He suggests it's because in the past, everybody used to eat organic, locally sourced food and at home: "Now life is faster; we eat at fast food chains or we buy industrial food for meals at home."
Albanian cuisine is Balkan in spirit but strongly influenced by the Mediterranean. Imam bajelldi is a traditional dish of oven-baked stuffed aubergines. The name means "the priest fainted" - possibly because the vegetables were so tasty he ate too much and passed out.
In Ohrid, Macedonia, Eli Struzan and her husband serve traditional Macedonian food in Restaurant Antiko, a small outlet built into the ancient city gate. In Macedonia, as in the rest of the world, food choices are based on culturally accepted paradigms of what is good for us. "We eat meat in our home every day: rice with chicken, sausages with potatoes," Struzan explains. "If a man doesn't eat meat, he won't have a happy day."
Animal products, however, use up large amounts of our body's energy, enzymes and water. The fermentation and putrefaction processes that happen in our intestines after a fillet mignon acidify our blood. To compensate, calcium is taken away from our bones, thus weakening them.