Fërgesë

Ingredients

• Green peppers600 g
• Tomatoes400 g
• Curd cheese gjizë350 g
• Feta150 g
• Onion1
• Garlic3 clove
• Butter60 g
• Flour1 tbsp
• Hot chilli1
• Salt and pepperto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Char the peppers over a flame or under a grill until the skins blacken.

   18 min

2. 2

   Put the hot peppers in a bag for ten minutes and peel them.

   15 min

3. 3

   Soften the onion and garlic in butter and stir in a spoon of flour.

   10 min

4. 4

   Add the chopped tomatoes and reduce them to a thick base with no loose liquid.

   12 min

5. 5

   Cut the peeled peppers into strips and stir them into the tomato base.

   8 min

6. 6

   Mash the curd cheese with the feta and work it into the hot mixture.

   8 min

7. 7

   Transfer it to a clay pan and bake at 200 °C for twenty minutes, until it bubbles.

   25 min

About the dish

The peppers are charred and peeled before baking. Skins in a fërgesë leave tough strips that never soften in the oven.

The cheese is sour and crumbly, the local gjizë. Processed cheese or mozzarella give a stringiness that has no place here.

It is served in its clay pan, bubbling. Turned out onto a plate a fërgesë cools within a minute and loses half its point.

Worth knowing

• — Salt at the end. The feta is salty already, and salted early a fërgesë often comes out over-seasoned.
• — Reduce the tomatoes dry. Moisture stops the cheese setting and the bake stays runny.
• — Fërgesë with veal is a second classic version rather than a variant of this one. In Tirana they are served as two different dishes.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

420 kcal

Protein

22 g

Fat

28 g

Carbs

18 g

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