TURKISH PIZZA ANYONE..Serving Pides with Pride!

Deeba @ PAB

16 years ago

“Ideas are like pizza dough, made to be tossed around.”

Anna Quindlen

Turkish pizza anyone?

…they call them PIDES, street food from Turkey. Quite similar to something called lahmajoun, an Armenian pizza. Scrumptious, I tell you!! I saw this post by Elle @ Elles New England Kitchen while following DB Filbert Gateaus posts 2 days ago & I was sold…hook, line & sinker.

Pide – Turkish Pizza

Pide is a staple Turkish food and you’ll find it all over the country. The Turkish eat an astounding four times as much bread as any other nation. Most of this must be mouth-watering pide, the Turkish flatbread sold in every store and baked on every street corner. Pide is also the name of Turkish pizza, the bread topped with lamb, onions, cheese and tomato or any variety of combinations. Pide is a long thin banana shaped bread, rolled with some skill from a small ball of dough. The bread is then covered with the topping of your choice and slammed into a large, solid fuel burning oven for about 10 minutes. The resulting pide is sliced up and served piping hot.

Serving Pides with Pride!

Just the words ‘Turkish pizza’ transported me to an exotic land, the land of my dreams; there was no stopping me. Morning broke &, thanks to Elle, I was engulfed with sweet dreams of Turkey & it’s street food.

This spice, sumac, comes from the berries of a wild bush that grows wild in all Mediterranean areas, especially in Sicily and southern Italy, and parts of the Middle East, notably Iran. It is an essential ingredient in Arabic cooking, being preferred to lemon for sourness and astringency.

I am the proud owner of a bag of Sumac powder that my sweet niece thoughtfully got for me from Dubai. She often makes the Turkish Adana Kebabs I posted long ago, recipe here, & enjoys them a lot. The bag of sumac, a beautiful purple-red powder, has been beckoning me to use it for a while; pide seemed to present one such opportunity, since I had been longing to use sumac for something other than adana kebabs – delightful, delicious & simple kebabs.

A small change to the recipe was the use of a fresh papaya tenderizer to soften the lamb…that’s just me because I do not like my lamb chewy. The flavours were great, the process SIMPLE; & the big bonanza…the kids loved them!

‘Moreish‘, rustic & delicious!

For the kids, I used a small amount of marinara sauce as the base sauce first, followed by the the topping & additional Baby Gouda cheese grated on top … was terrified of getting rejected on the ultimate pizza frontier I guess…but they loved them. Served pides to the kids as flat pizzas, the regular way & sliced. Was elated that they enjoyed pides so much; love it when they explore their tastes & experiment with new flavours; HUGE relief.

Here’s the recipe as adapted from Elles @ Elles New England Kitchen

Dough: ( I made 1 1/2 times the original recipe, got me 10 Turkish pizzas)
Active Dried Yeast – 1 1/2 tsp
Sugar – 1 tsp
Flour – 4 cups
Whole wheat flour – 1 cup
Salt – 1 1/2 tsp
Oil – 2 tbsp
Method:

Mix the yeast, sugar and 1 cup warm water in a mixing bowl. Proof for 10 minutes.
Add flour, salt and oil, mix slightly, then knead the dough on a floured board until smooth.
Shape into a ball, cover and let dough rise for about an hour.

Topping:
Ground lamb – 500gms (or your choice of meat)
Fresh green papaya – 1 tsp ; grated fine (very optional)
Onions – 2 small; finely diced
Garlic – 6-8 cloves/ 2-3 tbsp minced ( I like plenty of garlic)
Olive oil – 2 tbsp
Tomatoes – 4-5; seeded and chopped
Green capsicum – 2 small; diced
Coriander – 1 bunch; finely chopped
Tomato paste – 2 tsp
Sweet paprika – 2 tsp
Sumac powder – 1 tbsp + 1 tsp
Cumin powder – 1 tsp
Salt and pepper to taste
Low fat cottage cheese – 300-400gms (I used Le Bon)
Method for topping:

Marinade mince + 1 tsp papaya paste +1 tbsp minced garlic + 1 tsp sumac powder for 30 minutes, in the fridge.
Heat a skillet over medium heat, add the oil and saute the onions and remaining garlic for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Then add the mince & stir fry on high till cooked through well & any liquid dries up. If you use papaya, the mince will have a kind of pasty consistency, not crumbly. Take off heat.
To this, add the tomatoes, coriander, green capsicum, tomato paste & spices & mix it all up. Taste and adjust seasonings.
Heat oven to 450°.
Divide dough into 10 portions and roll out to thin circles. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment, and place 2 dough circles on each. Spread some of the topping on the first 2, top with grated cottage cheese or feta, then put the baking sheet in the oven.
Have 1/2 cup of cold water ready, and toss it in the bottom of the oven quickly, then shut the door. (I forgot to do this)
Bake for 8-10 minutes. Repeat with remaining dough.
Remove from pan to a cooling rack.
Roll pizzas up to eat.

Rolling in the PIDES – Pizza, the Turkish way…

This one’s on its way to my old friend Ben @ What’s Cookin US for his ‘I Love Baking’ event, a baking event for baking loving people…& to Susan’s @ Wild Yeast Blog for Yeastspotting.

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