Albania the smallest and least known of the Balkan countries, is known to Albanians as Shqipëria, meaning ‘Land of Eagles’—an appropriate name since two-thirds of the country is mountainous. Its language, the sole survivor derived from ancient Illyrian, is like no other, although now it contains a considerable number of words of Turkish, Slavonic, and Italian origin, especially noticeable in a culinary context.
The decades after the Second World War, when Albania was the sole European client state of communist China, have left little or no trace in Albanian kitchens.
