Remember the dinner that wasn’t good enough to blog? Well, I’m blogging it now, because it turned into a new and entirely original dinner the next night.
It began as a interesting-sounding Turkish Lamb Pizza from Darina Allen’s
. (Yes, I do have cookbooks that are not by Nigella.)
Darina Allen
, if you’re not familiar with her, is Ireland’s answer to Martha Stewart, except just for cooking, not for home decor; and without the dodgy book-keeping. She’s pretty much the grand-dame of the Irish culinary revival, or her mother-in-law Myrtle was before her, and she’s passing the torch on to her daughter-in-law
Rachel
, who is also a successful TV chef and author.)
I had seen this recipe in leafing through the book over breakfast, so when I saw ground lamb at the supermarket, it all came together nicely. At least, then I had to check the recipe again and procure a lemon and some tomatoes and I left out the parsley, which maybe would have made all the difference, but that was all I needed. The base, made from just flour and yogurt, intrigued me.
Darina gives quantities for 8-10 portions, and there were only the two of us, so of course I had a lot of topping mixture left over. More about that later. But this is how mine went:
Topping:
1lb minced lamb (ground lamb, if you’re American)
1 large onion
4 large tomatoes
2 tablespoons flat parsley, chopped
salt and pepper
Base:
2 cups white flour, plus more for dusting
About 1 cup plain yogurt
Lemon wedges to serve
You start these off in a heavy frying pan on the stovetop, then finish them under the grill/broiler. I’m sure you could cook them on the outdoor grill, but you might have to experiment with the method.
For the topping, chop the onion finely. Sautee it in olive oil or butter over a low heat until soft but not coloured.
Let it cool completely (or as much as you have time for – you could do this step way in advance, if you wanted). Dice the tomatoes. Then, using a fork, mix together the meat, onion, tomatoes, parsley, salt and pepper.
Next mix the flour and yogurt to make a soft dough. I only made enough for the two of us, so I had to eyeball the quantities, but I think I used about a cup of flour and half a cup or a bit more of yogurt to make each of the small pizza bases. (Sorry about the picture. I shouldn’t have used a white bowl.)
With lots of flour on your surface, roll (or press) it out as thinly as you can. Mine were each about 8 inches across, and a few millimeters thick, and they probably should have been thinner, but I was afraid they’d stick to the surface.
When it’s thin, spread a few spoonfuls of your meat mixture onto the round (ahem) of dough.
Turn on the grill/broiler to preheat, and put a baking sheet under it to get hot.
Have the heavy frying pan on the heat at this point. Fold the dough over in half and then into a quarter and transfer it to the pan, where you can open it out again.
(I thought all the topping would fall off, but it stuck quite well to the base. I don’t see why you shouldn’t put it in “naked” and then add the topping, but maybe the dough would stick to itself if you did it this way.)
After about 2 minutes, it should be golden on the bottom. Slide it carefully onto a hot baking tray and put it under the grill/broiler for another 2-3 minutes until the topping is done.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the meat really did cook in this short space of time. We ate them with lots of lemon squeezed over the top (this is really necessary to cut the fattiness of the meat) and they would probably have benefitted from the parsley I left out.
They were interesting, but not amazing. The dough was a little stodgy – I think it should have been thinner, or maybe I should have cooked them in the pan for longer.
**************
But there I was, with all that leftover mince mixture. The next night, I decided to turn it into Turkish meatballs.
To the mixture, I added an egg, some grated mozzarella, and a squeeze of cilantro (coriander leaf) from the squeezy coriander I had in the freezer. Fresh cilantro would of course have been even better. I used my small cookie portioner thingy (looks like a baby ice-cream scoop) to make evenly sized meatballs, and discovered that I needed to squeeze them out before rolling in flour, as the mixture was very wet. I put this down to the tomatoes – if making the meatballs from scratch, I would definitely squeeze the seeds and liquid out of the tomatoes before dicing them.
I baked the meatballs at 400 F for about 20 minutes, and we ate them with rice and broccoli, and they were quite delicious.
The next night, I said to hell with competing flavours and reheated them in half a jar of tomato-and-basil pasta sauce. They were still delicious (though you couldn’t really tell it was lamb any more).
So: three different meals from one recipe. This is why I don’t really bother to plan ahead. Sometimes it pays off nicely.
