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.