Albania.

The pantry is short and it repeats. Olive oil comes from the coastal groves around Vlorë and Berat and is used generously, not measured. Dairy runs through everything: kos, the sharp set yogurt eaten as a side, a drink, and a cooking liquid; gjizë, the fresh curd left after cheesemaking, which fills pies and peppers; and djathë i bardhë, the brined white cheese that plays the same role feta does in Greece. Corn matters as much as wheat — misërnik and pispili are cornmeal breads baked in trays — and beans, especially dried white beans, are the everyday protein in a country where meat was for decades a Sunday item rather than a daily one.

Technique divides into three habits. The first is the oven bake in a shallow earthenware or metal dish, where a mixture is fried down on the stove and then set in the oven under cheese, egg or yogurt until the surface colours. The second is petë — hand-rolled pastry sheets, thinner than commercial filo and slightly sturdier, stretched with a long thin rolling pin called an okllai and layered with oil into byrek and lakror. The third is the meze habit: small fried, pickled and cured things eaten slowly alongside raki, which is less a course than an entire way of spending an evening.

Meals follow a Mediterranean rhythm. Breakfast is bread with white cheese, olives and jam, or fried petulla on a weekend. Lunch, eaten mid-afternoon, is the real meal: a soup or bean pot, a baked dish, salad of tomato and cucumber under oil, bread, and yogurt on the side. Dinner is often lighter, and coffee — Albania has one of the highest café densities in Europe — happens constantly in between.

Regional differences are real and largely climatic. The north, around Shkodra and the highlands, leans on meat, dairy, cornbread and freshwater fish from Lake Shkodër, with heavier, plainer cooking suited to cold winters. The centre, Tirana and Elbasan, gave the country its two most famous dishes — fërgesë and tavë kosi — and cooks with the tomato-pepper-curd trio constantly. The south, historically Tosk territory around Korçë, Gjirokastër and Përmet, is closest to Greek cooking: more olive oil, more herbs, lakror pies, and a serious tradition of fruit preserves called gliko.

Ottoman rule left the vocabulary and much of the method — byrek, tavë, qofte, turshi, revani, and raki all carry that history — but Albanians will point out that the ingredients underneath are local and older. The honest summary is that Albanian food shares most of its dishes with somebody: byrek with the whole Balkans, trileçe with Turkey and Latin America, qofte with everyone from Sarajevo to Izmir. Tavë kosi is the exception it holds onto, and Elbasan is not shy about the claim.