EVIL ENVER HOXHA’S SWEET TREAT

FAVOURITE RECIPE: DIABETIC SHEQERPARE DOUGH BALLS

Make the dough from three glasses of flour, half a block of butter, three eggs, a glass of artificial sweetener and baking powder. Shape into balls and bake for 20 minutes at 180c. Bring half a glass of water with vanilla and sweetener to the boil until it turns to syrup, then pour it over the sheqerpare (sugar pastry).

EVEN though Albania’s communist dictator Enver Hoxha died in 1985, his chef refuses to be identified and gives his name only as ‘Mr K’.

He was working as a cook at a construction site in 1970 when he was summoned to Hoxha’s holiday villa and told he would be cooking for the prime minister.

Mr K believes he was chosen not for his talent but for his happy nature: ‘I was young and cheerful and everyone liked me. Enver liked cheerful people around him.’

Yet Hoxha eliminated anyone who could threaten his self-esteem, especially people from his past — schoolmates, ex-girlfriends and girls who had spurned him, army comrades, anyone who had known him when he was less than allpowerful. He also killed all dissidents. About 6,000 people were shot for expressing doubts about his policies too loudly. The challenge of cooking for Hoxha was his diabetes: he was 6ft5in tall but his doctors insisted he must live on 1,500 calories a day. That meant breakfast was cheese with jam, lunch was vegetable soup and fish, supper was yoghurt. Sometimes, though, when Hoxha’s temper seemed particularly foul, Mr K would risk serving sheqerpares as dessert. ‘He needed something sweet,’ he explains. ‘It would be better for all of us, for the whole country.’