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<\/a><\/p>\nI planned on detailing Klara\u2019s Albanian family recipe here but then thought, \u201cNo!\u00a0 It\u2019s a family recipe!\u00a0 You don\u2019t just slap that up on the internet like some sort of solution to how David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear.\u00a0 You protect the secret!\u201d<\/p>\n
So while I\u2019ll post a few photos here I don\u2019t think it\u2019ll give away TOO much.\u00a0 I will say it\u2019s a very easy recipe in that even a World\u2019s Worst Cook such as yours truly can maybe\u2026 maybe!… do it when I get home.<\/p>\n
Klara is a lawyer from Albania, her mother Albanian and her father Greek.\u00a0 Her hudband Jimmy is a Greek, his mother from Greece, his father from Albania. They met on Valentine\u2019s Day by chance.\u00a0 Klara and a few of her friends were all single and decided to go to dinner together.\u00a0 There were three of them.\u00a0 They showed up at the restaurant they\u2019d made a reservation at and were turned away because the ma\u00eetre d said they were only serving \u201ccouples\u201d menus and couldn\u2019t possibly serve THREE people\u2026 or even one couple and (gasp) a single person!\u00a0 They same thing happened at the next two restaurants they tried.\u00a0 Klara hadn\u2019t eaten all day, looking to indulge in a decadent dinner and she was getting super hungry.\u00a0 One of her friends said she had a friend in town who was visiting and he was single so they could have a foursome and maybe get served that way.\u00a0 She called him up and enter Jimmy.\u00a0 With four people, they could get a two-couples table.\u00a0 While her friends were super into Jimmy, Klara had no time for any of it except to, as she said, stuff her face with food as she was starving.\u00a0 So while the girls flirted with Jimmy and he flirted back, Jimmy says he couldn\u2019t stop looking at Klara.\u00a0 By night\u2019s end, he had asked only her for her phone number.\u00a0 For the next week, he met her to coffee, for dinner, for drinks.\u00a0 The friends were jealous and Klara waved them off saying no way was she serious about this guy \u2013 on top of it all he was looking to move to Germany and she had to finish her studies.\u00a0 But after a week, Jimmy faked an injury and asked her if she had any eucalyptus oil to run into his shoulder, a homeopathic solution (is this what the kids call \u201cessential oils\u201d).\u00a0 Klara said of course she did and as he fumbled with the oil she finally sighed heavily and rubbed it into his shoulder for him.\u00a0 That\u2019s when she decided, \u201cwell\u2026 maybe he\u2019s not SO terrible\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 And they\u2019ve been together since.<\/p>\n They were a lovely couple and when she first pitched a class on cheese, her husband and her mom back in Albania thought she was crazy.\u00a0 But it\u2019s been surprisingly popular.\u00a0 Klara thought everybody knew how to make cheese.\u00a0 The one drawback is that Jimmy is very often running out to the store to buy more and more cases of milk (spoiler alert \u2013 one of the ingredients is milk!\u00a0 But that\u2019s all you get out of me \u2013 name, rank, and milk is ONE ingredient in making your own cheese).\u00a0 As we chatted over wine, cheese, and homemade bread (which Klara also gave me the recipe for), the only hiccup in the fun was when I mentioned how sometimes I feel like apologizing to the world for our current political mess.\u00a0 Klara was pro-Trump and anti-immigration and Jimmy was outraged.\u00a0 I tried to defuse the situation and change the subject but it was the one tiny crack in an otherwise blissfully fun two hours.\u00a0 Thanks again, Trump.\u00a0 Sigh.<\/p>\n Anyhoo, Klara innovated on her grandmother\u2019s recipe\u2026 which became her mother\u2019s recipe\u2026 which became her recipe\u2026 and now is MY recipe.\u00a0 She infused the cheeses with flavorings \u2013 the sage and thyme ones were particularly great.\u00a0 I tried something potentially bonkers \u2013 blueberry and walnuts because I felt like I had experienced her great thyme cheese (which with a bit of olive oil — man, oh, man.\u00a0 That’s the cheese!).\u00a0 Amongst her apothecary jars she had green peppers, paprika, various other spices\/seasonings\u2026 and she also suggested I could even mix in some red wine to give it a hint of something else.\u00a0 In any case, this is what my cheese looked like after hardening overnight:<\/p>\n<\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n