Many years ago the wonderful Tutu and I lived in New South Wales. In our town there was a great little restaurant called The Istanbul that funnily enough served Turkish food. We would go to the Istanbul usually about once a fortnight or so and after a while we had tasted everything on the menu at least twice. They also had a specials board which we sampled keenly until one day the owner approached us. He said to us hey look, you come here all the time and like our food, how about we do a deal, you book in, we will bring you the food at twenty bucks a head, as much as you want. Perfect. From then on we would take a seat, they would pour us a wine and out the food would come. Then one day we were served Lahmacun, I was already a pizza addict and yet here was a pizza with no cheese that was to die for. Tutu is coming over tonight and this is what we will have. Enjoy.
Ingredients.
A pizza dough – do you really need for me to tell you this bit. I use my bread machine to make mine.
Now I make enough for one large pizza given the tray I have so I’ll leave it up to you but for the topping you will need,
Lamb mince
Garlic
Onion
Cinnamon
Allspice
Pine Nuts
Tomato paste
Tomatoes, chopped and not tinned.
Chicken stock
Lemon juice
Mint
Parsley
Baby spinach
Yoghurt with some added water to pour.
Method.
Make a pizza dough [spooky music plays in background]
Fry off the lamb mince in a pan till browned. You will want to render off the fat by straining it.
Heat some oil in the same fry pan and saute the garlic and onion. Add spices and nuts. When the pine nuts are golden add tomato, paste, stock and juice. Add the mince and cook on low till you have reduced the liquid, this has to be fairly dry. Remove from heat and fold in mint, parsley and baby spinach.
Roll out your dough and top with lamb mix. 15 minutes in a very hot oven should do. Cut into pieces and in a jug put yoghurt and some water so the yoghurt runs like a gravy. Serve and add yoghurt as desired.
Anyway I work with a Turkish girl and have spoken to her about this recipe. She and her husband love it but she said to me “When I make it Hung I add six chopped red chillies. When my husband eats it he starts to sweat, and sweat and sweat but he eats it all”
“So why do you do that Woman who cannot be named for Privacy reasons?”
“Because I can Hung, because I can”. Strange but true.
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sandshoe said:
I am so grateful to you for this recipe story, Hung. I will try this recipe soon. I really need the incentive of others’ beautiful food to keep me buoyant experimenting. It’s not the same out of an impersonal recipe book either. I love story recipes. I love you and Tutu come to think on it. We must meet one day. xx
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Hung One On said:
That is a lovely thing to say Shoe. Meet up would be great.
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Therese Trouserzoff said:
Man, Hung, you’re cookin’ ! ….. because you can ! Great piece, Hungster, great piece. I love a recipe with a sting in the tail. Ps – I knew a Vietnamese chef… Juan Ton Soup – same guy ?
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Hung One On said:
Thanks boss, yeah the same for sure 🙂
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algernon1 said:
Sounds terrific HOO. We’ll have to give it a go. A bloke of Egyptian background made a hummus at work for morning tea the other day that was just great. He also makes this thin called a I think called zucha which is a crisp flat bread with spices. Hmm. We’ve also got a Bangladeshi guy who makes something similar which has spices and lemon. Rolls it up and puts it into a sandwich press brings it around for all when we start work each day.
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gerard oosterman said:
Lovely Pizza but Elizabeth I can’t open. It doesn’t seem clickable.
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Hung One On said:
It opens for me Gez. Not sure what is happening. It does take a few minutes though.
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vivienne29 said:
Give it a bit of time – probably all the vids in it instead of links. It’s a ripper. Turn up the radio.
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helvityni said:
Hung, looks yummy, when it comes to pizzas the homemade ones are the best, will do this one…
We have house guests , so can’t linger, we might even end up doing little trips with them…so just a quick words of appreciation of your story….enjoyable.
I miss GO’s pizza oven…
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Hung One On said:
Thank you H
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vivienne29 said:
It sounds terrific Hung. Love the background story – I can see it happening. You appreciated them and in turn they pretty well loved you.
One thing needs clarifying – is the dough to be pressed out/rolled out thin? i.e. is the photo from SBS the way you had it? This is an excellent Saturday night dinner.
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Hung One On said:
Yes it was a good time in our life. $20 each was a lot of money then but it was beautifully decorated and the food was simply stunning, Marinated lamb cutlets was one of my favorites. They were very friendly to us and we always finished with baklava and a short black coffee. While this house was being built we also ended up the same with our local Vietnamese cafe that we would dine at every Friday night. One night the girl said next time you come I will order for you. Well we never ordered again, they just brought out plates of food. After the meal the girls father who was the chef would come and talk with us. They moved unfortunately to a bigger restaurant and we lost touch with them.
Yes the dough is rolled out thin style. I roll mind on baking paper then onto the tray which is roughly 40 cm by 25 cm
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vivienne29 said:
Ta. Another lovely story in your reply.
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Hung One On said:
I’m a foodie I guess. Anyway the Vietnamese chef, Juan, had already retired and was an award winning chef but came out of retirement to help his daughter as she had separated from her husband. He would cook us some of his specialties that weren’t on the menu, chilli black bean beef was one. And they loved serving us a fish crockpot. And thanks Viv, I identify with your food stories, keep them coming.
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