Lahmacun (Not Loreal's latest age revitalising cream..!)

Lahmacun - "IPA: [lahmaˈdʒun]) or lahm bi-`ajĩn (From Arabic لحم بعجين lahm bi-`ajĩn, "meat with dough")" according to Wikipedia is essentially a Turkish version of Pizza:



How did I find out about it? Well, I blame my good friend Elliot, who set his myface status to "is making 2kg of Lahmacun". Not having a fucking clue what Lahmacun is, I thought I would google it and found out that it sounds rather nice.

With one of my old colleagues (*sniff*) leaving for Turkey on Monday, I thought I'd give it a go (in her honour - even if she is a vegetarian!).

So, here's a recipe.

What you need:

For the actual bread:
175g of good quality plain flour
1/2 a little sachet of the easy blend yeast (available in all supermarkets near the flour)
1/2 tsp salt
125ml of warm water
1tbsp of good quality extra virgin olive oil

For the topping:
250g lamb mince
2 tablespoons of tomato puree
1/2 an onion
1 large pepper - green, yellow or red - depending on what you favourite colour is.
1 garlic clove, finely chopped.
A couple of sprigs of fresh, flat-leaf parsley.
1tsp of hot paprika (Hungary's answer to life)
1tsp salt

What you need to do:
1) Sieve the flour into a bowl.
2) Add the yeast and the 1/2 tsp of salt.
3) Make a well in the centre and pour in the warm (not hot!) water.
4) Mix to form a sticky dough.
5) Flour a clean work surface and knead the dough for 5 minutes or so until smooth.
6) Pour a splash of olive oil into a bowl and roll the dough in it and around the sides of the bowl. Lob the bowl in a warm place (I put mine on top of my TV!) for an hour or so.

Then..

1) Roughly chop your onion and pepper. Chuck this in a food processor and whizz it until you get a sort of paste. (Don't worry if you don't have a food processor - I use a £5 hand blender thingy I got from Te$co).
2) Put the paste in a sieve over a bowl to get rid of the excess water / juices. You can throw the water away.
3) Put your mince into a bowl, then add chop your parsley and chuck that in too. Add your tsp of salt, the chopped garlic, paprika and finally the mushy onion and pepper mixture.
4) Get your hands dirty by mixing it all together.
5) Retrieve your dough and divide it into either 2 large balls (for pizza sized Lahmacun) or 6 balls for little ones. Knead the portions for a minute or two to squeeze out the air. Grab a rolling pin (hint: You can use a roll of cling film if you don't have a rolling pin) and roll the balls into circle shapes, with a thickness of about 3 - 5 mm. You want them real thin.
6) Chuck the bases onto a baking tray and then smear portions of the mince mixture on top - making sure you go right to the edges and again, keeping it thin.
7) Bake in a preheated oven (230 degrees, gas mark 8) for 10 minutes or so.
8) Enjoy!

I would suggest accompanying this with the wine I mentioned in the previous post. It's called Terres De Galets - a Cote Du Rhone that I picked up from Sainsbury's (25% off this week). Medium bodied and with lush fruit notes it goes great with red meats.

Cheers to Dr M for recommending the new Moby album - well worth a listen. It's far more diverse than his past album.