Lamb is harder to find in Oklahoma than I thought! I went on quite an adventure to find lamb in an international market, and they had some-- BUT it was frozen and ridiculously expensive. I decided to go to a butcher shop to look, too. No lamb. At that point, I decided to just use beef. Yes, I realize this changes the flavor, but it is the best I can do considering the geographic factors at play. The rest of the ingredients were extremely easy to find (in fact, I already had most of them in the fridge). I opted to use a 2% fat yogurt because it was what I had on hand. I did spring for fresh herbs over dried. 

The recipe I used: https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/albanian_baked_lamb_with_92485

This is my very first meal, so please be gentle when I describe how POORLY making this went for me! I began by adding the diced meat (beef chuck) into a casserole dish. The recipe called for me to add butter to it, and then precook the meat for 45 minutes. Well, I forgot to add the butter, so the meat went without it. Then, the recipe said to "drain the meat." I drained the liquid, and disposed of it. Next, I precooked the rice to make it softer. After that, I started on the yogurt sauce. I made a roux of butter, flour, fresh oregano, and garlic.  Well, the next step was to add the meat liquid THAT I THREW OUT! 

After Mason convinced me not to toss everything and start over, I mixed a concoction of soy sauce and water in order to replace to missing liquid. That went into the roux. Then, I folded in 4 beaten eggs, the yogurt, and the roux together. It created this yellow, weirdly creamy sauce. I added the precooked rice to the dish over the top of the meat, and then I poured the sauce on top. I cut up some butter to put on top, and then tossed it in the oven for 55 minutes. Towards the end of cooking, it was puffing up correctly, but it was not getting brown-- so I broiled it for about 3 minutes. It never did get as brown as the picture, but I did not want to burn the yogurt. The end result did not look too bad considering the major flaws in its construction. 

We let it cool for a while before we cut into it, and then we portioned in out. Disclaimer: take this taste section with a grain of salt, and remember how altered this recipe became. 

The taste ended up being rather good, and even Mason liked it. It was creamy, and in some places took on the consistency of a more tangy cottage cheese. That, coupled with the beef, made for a tangy, savory, umami flavor. My biggest complaint is actually that there could have been a lot more rice. 

We ate it with pita bread. That is, no doubt, less than traditional, but hey, it is a Balkan country! The bread was the perfect vessel to scoop up to softer pieces of yogurt and rice.

I would say 3 1/2 stars out of 5. Mason says 4. 

Albania is a country in Southern Europe located along the mouth of the Adriatic Sea. The capital is  Tirana. Early in history, it was conquered by the Romans. Later, it was conquered by the Ottomans who ruled there for hundreds of years. It was only declared independent in 1912, and even then it was torn apart by WW1 and WW2. It went from being ruled as a Monarchy to being a communist state on the East side of the Iron Curtain. When the USSR collapsed in 1989, Albania embraced democracy amid a tumultuous relationship with neighboring countries.