In 2012, mom and I went to Turkey for a two week vacation. It was the first trip after my father passed, and we had an amazing adventure. We decided to have our lunch/dinner on Saturday expecting 3 to 6 inches of snow tomorrow. Today would have been mom and dad’s 56th anniversary. So while my father wasn’t with us, he was with us in spirit.

In Turkey, we saw so many different areas of the country, explored ancient ruins, enjoyed regional cuisine, and one of my favorite parts was seeing what was once the largest church in the world, Hagia Sophia, next to the beautiful Blue Mosque. Istanbul is a beautiful city and I’d love to visit it again sometime. After visiting the Hagia Sophia and the cistern. We were hungry and stopped to grab lunch. We’d seen people eating, what looked like pizza, but with a very thin crust. We found an outdoor café and ordered Turkish tea and Lahmacun (LAH’-MAH’-juhn). This is widely known as Turkish pizza but the only similarity between lahmacun and pizza is how they look. They are both round shaped and topped with a mixture. Lahmacun has a thinner crust, doesn’t have cheese and always topped with a ground meat(beef or lamb) mixture, served with fresh vegetables. Plus, it is rolled up or folded before eating. We didn’t know how to eat it, so up we cut triangles and ate it like pizza. I think flatbtead with spicy ground meat would define lahmacun better.

For the dough, you could use yeast or not, so I found a recipe without yeast and only required water, flour and salt. Many of the ingredients are things you can easily find. The only thing I bought online was pepper paste. Step 1 – make the dough. Step 2 – create the mixture for the topping. Step 3 – prepare garnish vegetables for the toppings, But you don’t put on until after it is cooked. Step 4 – cook and eat.

It’s a little more complicated than that, but I found a recipe that I liked. The most unusual part was grating vegetables. I never grated peppers, onions and tomatoes before, but it was nice to have very small pieces of it versus dices in the topping. You only cook the lahmacun for 7-10 min, but in a 450° oven. We could fit two pies on a cookie sheet, and we only ate one each because they were pretty filling. The garnishes were fun and quite tasty. We topped it with an onion, sumac and parsley salad, fresh tomatoes, and lemon. This time we folded the sandwich to eat it so in some ways it reminded us of a Turkish taco.

Would you make it again? Yes definitely. It had a lovely flavor, nothing was over powering, the vegetable toppings added a fresh touch. We also have lots of leftovers, so we have to eat it.

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