← Nouns Cooking · Lebanese & Turkish

Ingredients

• 400 g strong white bread flour
• 7 g fast-action dried yeast (1 sachet)
• 1 tsp Sugar
• 1 tsp Salt
• 2 tbsp Olive oil
• 250 ml lukewarm water
• 300 g lamb or beef mince (not too lean)
• 1 Onion, roughly chopped
• 1 red pepper, roughly chopped
• 1 Green chilli, deseeded
• 2 Tomato, roughly chopped
• 2 cloves Garlic
• 30 g Parsley
• 1 tbsp Tomato purée (paste)
• 1 tbsp Turkish pepper paste (biber salçası) (optional)
• 2 tsp Pul biber (Aleppo-style pepper flakes)
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• ½ tsp Allspice
• 1 Red onion, thinly sliced
• 1 tsp Sumac
• 2 Lemon, cut into wedges

Method

1. Mix the flour, yeast, sugar and salt, then add the oil and water and bring it together. Knead for 8–10 min until smooth and springy. Cover and leave somewhere warm to rise for 1 hour, until doubled.
2. For the topping, blitz the onion, pepper, chilli, tomatoes, garlic and three-quarters of the parsley in a food processor to a coarse paste (or chop everything very finely). Tip into a sieve and press lightly to drain off the extra juice.
3. Mix the vegetable paste with the mince, tomato paste, pepper paste, pul biber, cumin, allspice and 1 tsp salt to make a soft, spreadable topping.
4. Heat the oven as hot as it goes, ideally 250°C (230°C fan, 480°F), with a heavy baking tray or pizza stone inside for 20 min.
5. Divide the dough into 8 balls and roll each one out very thin, to an oval about 25 cm long. Spread a thin layer of topping right to the edges.
6. Slide 1 or 2 at a time onto the hot tray and bake for 6–8 min until the edges are crisp and the meat is cooked through.
7. Toss the red onion with the sumac and the rest of the parsley. Top each lahmacun with onions and a squeeze of lemon, roll it up and eat while hot.

Tips

• Spread the topping thinly: it should be a scraping, not a thick pizza layer, or the base goes soggy.
• Short on time? Use large flour tortillas instead of dough and bake for about 5 minutes.

Sources

Written in our own words after cross-checking these recipes:

Olive Magazine BBC Good Food Ozlem's Turkish Table