There are two questions I frequently get when I talk about Clcooks with people, What is the best/worst dish you have made? The best dish is to hard to choose but I think I found a new contender for worst dish in Tavë kosi. The way Savuer described it made it sound so good “Garlicky lamb and rice baked under a thick, tart veil of yogurt is a dish beloved throughout Albania”. I should have listened to the translation of the name which is “soured milk casserole”.
Further enhancing the appeal of this dish was that it was not very hard to make and did not require a large variety of ingredients, most of which I had on hand.
There are two steps to cooking Tavë Kosi , the lamb filling that goes on the bottom and the yogurt mix that goes on top. Both steps were simple, chop up the lamb shoulder and place in a pot with butter, oil, and flour.
While that was cooking, I started to work on the yogurt topping which consisted of five eggs, and 4 cups of yogurt.I really need to get into the habit of mise en place which is having all of the ingredients pre chopped and measured. I have a bad habit of chopping/measuring as I go which slows me down.
The roux was simply butter and flour mixed into a slurry. Once that was done, I pulled from the heat and add the other ingredients.
The lamb filling smelled amazing and was pretty delicious. Unfortunately for me a lot of the rice burnt to the bottom of the pan.
The two mixtures side by side. First layer out the lamb/rice mixture, then the yogurt topping and place in the oven at 375.
It looked beautiful coming out of the oven and filled the kitchen with a nice warm garlic scent. The smell did not match up the taste however. I found the yogurt topping to be too sour for my tastes. I consulted other recipes to make sure there was some non sour yogurt that I was not aware of but you are supposed to use greek yogurt which I did.
I would recommend not making this national dish. I ultimately ended up scraping off the topping and eating just the lamb/rice mixture. A little disappointing to say the least, but now I definitively know the answer to worst national dish I have cooked.
Recipe is available here