Kosovo's Kitchens
Corrupt officials and stuffed peppers
A few years ago I spent three months in Kosovo, a land-locked Balkan country with a bloody past. The only representative of a UK charity based in the Pristina Ministry of Education, my job was to convince corrupt officials to fund a scheme supporting high school students to volunteer in special educational needs schools. It was, unsurprisingly, a tough gig. Years later, it isn’t the financial frustrations that remain in my memory, but something else.
During these summer months, my interest in everyday food began. Culinary delights were not to be found in my glass corner office (the only corner office I think I will ever have). As you can imagine, I was never wined and dined at the glitziest hotels by officials tempted to enrich the education of Kosovo's finest. Instead, the only benefit I had from the questionable expense claims of these officials was the odd lunch at the top floor cafeteria. Much to their annoyance, an omlette and chips was not enough to stop me being a nuisance in their daily work life.
Having said that, I think the ceiling of glitz for Pristina's hotels was relatively low. The lights around the rooftop of one high-rise hotel advertised a ★★★★HOTEL. This metres high invitation to stay had, unfortunately, fallen victim to the ropey power of the rest of Pristina, resulting in their very public marketing of a ★★HO. I wasn't too worried about missing out on that.
At a loss for company to keep within the Ministry, I was reliant on the family that I was living with and friends made throughout my hapless work days. They would invite me for meals. In return I would offer to help cook, and, most often, they would accept. It helped to satiate my solo-traveller's curiosity, loneliness, and inability to host in return. These long weekend afternoons became my favourite time in the week.
Before heading to Kosovo, I wasn't sure what to expect. Quick research would either provide gripping details of the Battle of Kosovo against the Ottoman Turks or the more recent and utterly devastating Kosovan war against Serbia and its allies. This lack of tourist-friendly information unnerved me. Mum pointed out that surely a country known for its violence not to have made the headlines in recent years, must be a good thing - no news is good news.
The kitchens of Kosovo were not news-worthy, but it was the news that I sent home. Long emails, the writing even more sketchy than it currently is, dropping into the inboxes of friends and family. It was, perhaps, the beginning of The Flavour Narratives.
Engaging with people and endeavouring to understand the reasons for the differences between our society and theirs has always captivated me. It struck me that this lack of information should not discourage me, but be seen as an opportunity. Leaping straight into a country that is fairly unknown is a challenge pretty hard to come by these days. The rest of the world has only just begun to stick its head above the parapet that is the Balkans.
Catching John McCarthy's Saturday Live reports on Radio 4 about the little heard of growth of tourism in the Country was the first thing that I allowed to enter my metaphorical box labelled "Kosovo". So now it contained a little town called Janjevo. White walls and terracotta roof tiles capturing simultaneously rich Ottoman past and debilitating abandonment during the war. Crossed with this was what I could gather from Elizabeth Gowing's book "Travels in Blood and Honey-Becoming a Bee Keeper in Kosovo." The hospitality and kindness of the people shone through unabatedly. Interwoven with her honey-infused anecdotes was the need to remain so traditionally locked into their family lives and commitments of pre-war Kosovo that progression seemed a challenge.
A young, largely unemployed population means only one thing - drinking, and a lot of it. Though, in Kosovan style, we were drinking coffee. Pristina's cafés burst out of their façades and onto the street. An almost English defiance of the weather had developed, with everybody forced to enjoy their Lucky Strike in the open air or face the recently imposed €200 fine for smoking inside. I spent languid hours discovering the complexities of life at the centre of Europe. Macchiato in hand, some of the knots in my net were unravelled.
Many of the female volunteers [on the project I was working on] were unable to leave home, bound by traditional familial obligation. Sometimes it was those at home that struggled to understand the logic of their serving others - essentially working for free. For others, the lure of the new Albanian highway to the sun (or the sea) was a much more attractive offer.
However, when I was not buzzing round on macchiato, it was peppers, Turkish tea or peanuts. In line with Albanian tradition, hospitality was consistently and heart warmingly overwhelming. The family I was living with would regularly invite me to sit and eat with them. Renowned for their love of peppers, the Jahjars roasted, chargrilled, stuffed, fried and slow cooked those long, mightily flavoursome, capsicums within a fork's width of their recognisable lives. Within a second of my uttering a tentative "faleminderit" [thank you] I was, according to them, part of the family, and so my love affair with peppers began to grow. Even if I walked in having already eaten, my linguistic and familial elevation meant that I would be implored to join whichever member of the family or neighbourhood had invited themselves in.
I take solace in my time in the evening. Being able to sit, read, write my diary and disappear off to a Desert Island or melt into Kate Adie's dulcet tones is a perfect way to end the day. Indeed, with the call to prayer seeping in through the window I would allow myself to hear "Our correspondent in Pristina..." Though I could pause Kate Adie, I could not stifle the stream of visitors to the house. With a wedding being planned, every guest has to be hosted before the big day.
I find reading these emails fascinating. Enough time has for me to have forgotten the rhythm of these passages. It is intriguing to see that what I love to share now is the same as it always was. Food, its cooking at home, and the people who invite me to share in that learning are the main characters of The Flavour Narratives. There’s a comfort in knowing that whilst life around me has changed hugely, the temptation to the kitchen remains.
For now though, I’m off to find some peppers to stuff.