Traditional Albanian Dishes-A delicious baking recipe from Elbasani

Tava Me Pistil is a cuisine of Central Albania, mainly of the Elbasan area. Like Tava e Kosit, this recipe is one of the Albanian Traditional Dishes that cook in the city of Elbasan for centuries and inherited from generation to generation to preserve and introduce the traditional Elbasan cuisine.
This dish mainly cooks in the cold winter season. The recipe does not contain many ingredients, and it is a combination of meat with onion and plum Pistil, which requires to follow the directions and the right quantity properly to realize a delicious baking traditional dish.

According to tradition, this recipe used to cook with mutton, but today we are bringing it with beef, which we can find fresh all year and for even healthier cooking. It is a tasty baking dish that you can prepare for a family lunch and a family holiday meal if you like to cook traditional recipes.
Plum Pistil gives a special flavor to this recipe, softening the sweetness of the onion and giving the recipe a unique taste.
Like other traditional Elbasan dishes recipes, this recipe can cook with lamb or goat, too.

The secret for preparing a delicious casserole with Pistil is in the ingredients to be fresh and organic as well as to follow the right directions in the way of cooking.
Thus the pistil should be placed in lukewarm water a few minutes before the start to cook the recipe. In this way, it dissolves easily after adding it to the pan and spreads the taste evenly throughout the baking pan.
The onion needs to cut finely in small dices and cook in medium heat until it tender, and add the meat in pieces and stir-fry together until it changes color. Next step, add the red pepper, black pepper, and stir-fry for a few minutes until the onions and meat season with spices.
Add the softened pistil to the water, the rice, and cover it all with water. We cook the meat mixture for a few minutes before transferring it to the roasting pan.

This recipe finishes by baking it in the casserole until it takes on a nice reddish color, not drying out completely, and left it with a little juice at the end. It used to serve with self-cooked cornbread in Elbasani houses.

Ingredients – 6 Servings

600 g of mutton, beef, or lamb
5-6 big onions
50 g of plum Pistil
2 tbsp of rice
1 tsp of red powder pepper
salt, black pepper, olive oil

Directions

First, We cook the beef separately for the fast and better cook. If you are going to use lamb, mutton, or goat in this recipe, you can cook it directly with the onions as they can cook faster than beef.
We will cut the onions into cubes and mix them with 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil and a little water, and we cook them in medium heat cover with a lid in its juice until they soften completely.
We will add the red pepper and black pepper and cook for another 2-3 minutes until the onion gets the taste and color of the pepper.
We will add the boiled meat, and we continue to cook it a little more, adding the softened pistil to the water.
We will add salt and previously washed rice and cook for a few minutes in its onion and meat juice.
We will also add meat broth to cover all the mass in the pot., and we will let them cook for a few minutes until we see that the pistil dissolved and the rice started to bind the prepared mass.
Meanwhile, we preheated the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. We will take a clay baking pan and throw the prepared mass and bake it in the preheated oven for about 30 minutes.
Bake until it turns reddish, overlapping the pan without drying completely.
Serve it warm with warm cornbread.