By Lindsay Sterling
My husband's co-worker's father, Bill Dilios, taught me how to make his favorite dish from his childhood in Albania. It's called kotopita, and it's like chicken pot pie, but with filo crust and an epic story inside. It starts after World War II in a village called Politsani. Bill grew up there in the rocky foothills of a major mountain range separating Albania and Greece. His life as a boy was saturated with fear. A brutal communist dictator, Enver Hoxha, had come to power. And because Bill's father was in the U.S., secret police blacklisted his family. Teachers, doctors, and priests were being thrown into jail, and letters from his father would arrive with money stolen out of them and words covered in black. Bill was constantly pilfering carrots, apples, and walnuts where he could. Government rations were paltry: a quart of oil, a pound sugar, and five pounds of meat per month for four people. Bill watched his mother make filo dough from flour and water, kotopita on special occasions, and yogurt and cheese from their cow's milk. They were lucky if they ate meat once a month.
Now, he's like Jackson Pollock with a pastry brush. Drips of melted butter fall onto the white sheets of fi dough like the first drops of rain. He doesn't brush the butter on or fuss about it in any way. This is not exactly my experience working with phyllo. Later as we're eating, he explains something to me: "Once you have your freedom, life is easy." I promise myself I'll remember. Life is easy here. It is.
Recalling his teenage years, he explained that one day his older brother came home with a black and blue face and a broken jaw. By 1957 the family knew that they had to escape the country, or they would be sent to prison, work camps or killed.
They'd tried to escape three times. The first time Bill's mother couldn't make it over the steep high-altitude mountain pass. The second time Bill stayed back, unable to leave his mother behind. The third time, in April, just the brothers went. They packed a gun, shoes studded with nails to help grip the mountain ice, white sheets to camouflage themselves against he snow, and a cooked chicken their grandmother had given them. They got over the mountain pass, hiked all night, and by midmorning were wet with sleet, dizzy with fatigue, and unable to see. They nearly stumbled into an Albanian border guard asleep with his machine gun under a tree. Before long, they made it to a beautiful sunny valley. They demanded of a shepherd, pointing their gun at him: "Albania or Greece?" The shepherd said, "Greece." They were free.
Two brothers visiting the place where they began their escape from Albania in their youth.
Soon Bill and his brother were on a plane to Boston. Bill met his father for the first time at the airport. He picked them up in a maroon Buick and took them back to Portland. They worked at his Greek restaurant, Christy's on Cumberland Ave (where Maria's is today). Bill worked there for 17 years. He met his wife (a Mainer) there, and they had three kids who are now all full grown. Today Bill helps to prepare family recipes at his son's new restaurant, Olympic Pizza and Grille in the Little Dolphin Plaza in Scarborough.
Bill's mother's grave in Politsani, Albania.
Sadly, after Bill and his brother left Albania in 1957, his mother was sent to a work camp, and he never saw her again. When I make this pie, I'm going to thank my lucky stars for my liberties in this country, and have a moment of silence for one woman I never knew, but now, whose pie I do.
To see videos of Bill's brother in 2007 in Politsani, showing where Germans, Italians, Albanian rebells fought, hearing village singing, and reliving his escape route, please visit: http://www.politsani.com/video.asp