Family Chef: A taste of home Byrek by Salta, Darzeza, Albania

Difficulty: hard

Preparation time: 40 minutes

Cooking time: 40 minutes

Ingredients: 500 g of white flour

1 cup of water

3 eggs

500 g of white yogurt

300 g of feta cheese

2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

1 teaspoon of salt

Mix flour, salt and water and

vigorously knead until you obtain

an elastic, compact dough.

Crack the eggs, mix them and

admire their colour.

Then add the yogurt and continue

to mix.

Make 13 golf ball-sized portions.

One for each layer.

Patiently roll the dough in

all directions until it’s almost

invisible. The thinner the better.

Grease a round pan and start

unrolling the dough layers.

After the third layer, generously

spread egg-yogurt mix.

Then add another layer of dough

and crumble some feta cheese on

it. Don’t be shy.

Repeat this procedure 3 times.

Remember, the thinner the layers,

the better the byrek.

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Family Chef: A taste of home Byrek by Salta, Darzeza, Albania

Cut the pie in squares for an

easier serving and pour some oil

on top of it.

Bake it at 180 °C for 40 minutes. Allow to cool and enjoy.

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Meet the Chef Falafel

Welcome to The World Food

Programme’s (WFP) Family Chef

series. Explore the culinary treasures

and cooking abilities of refugees who

benefit from WFP’s cash-based transfers,

an initiative that allows individuals to

buy the food they need to cook their

traditional dishes.

Salta, a happily married 73-year-old and

mother of 9, lives in Darzeza village in Fier

prefecture, one of the most severely affected

areas by the February floods, the worst to hit

Albania in decades. Her family lost 7 hens and

a goat that was giving birth during the floods.

All of them drowned, and along with them

her ability to produce enough food to feed the

family.

Salta lives with her husband and 2 youngest

sons. Her husband took care of the family farm,

which was destroyed by the floods. One of their

sons lives in the house next door with his wife

and their beautiful triplets.“We might be poor,

but these 3 young ladies are our treasures,”

Salta proudly explains.

WFP officially closed its office in Albania in

2006, but severe flooding in 2015 decided

there would have been a new chapter in

WFP’s history in the country: responding to

the request of the Government of Albania to

provide assistance to the most vulnerable

families in the seriously hit communities to help

them to rebuild their lives after the floods.

With no offices there, WFP opted to use SCOPE,

an innovative cloud-based information platform

for managing assistance programmes. This

WFP-developed technology allows offices to

monitor and control distributions of food, cash

and vouchers electronically and in near real

time, from anywhere.

SCOPE also enabled Salta’s household data

to be imported from WFP’s partner - Red

Cross - and to create an electronic file used to

personalize the blank cheques supplied by the

Bank.

She was one of almost 9,500 people who

received 13,020 Albanian Lek (US$105) to

cover their food needs for 3 months. Salta, like

many others, bought the necessary ingredients

to cook one of Albania’s most characteristic

dishes: byrek, a savory pie made with a thin,

flaky pastry filled with cheese, meat, spinach

or other ingredients.“I’m extremely grateful

because I can finally prepare a rich byrek me

gjizë (with cheese) for my family again, with

plenty of feta, yogurt, and eggs”, said the

happy granny.

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