Lahmacun

the Anatolian flatbread rolled paper-thin under a scraping of minced lamb, tomato and red pepper paste, baked in minutes and eaten rolled around parsley and lemon

Origin: Gaziantep, Şanlıurfa & Anatolia

From the journey of Wheat.

The name is Arabic and describes the construction exactly: laḥm bi-'ajīn, meat with dough. The dough is rolled until it is nearly transparent, a very thin layer of minced lamb worked with tomato, red pepper paste, onion, garlic and parsley is scraped across it, and the whole thing goes into a fiercely hot oven for two or three minutes. It comes out floppy rather than crisp, and it is eaten by piling parsley and onion down the middle, squeezing lemon over, and rolling it into a tube. The proportion is the thing that surprises people. A lahmacun carries a scraping of topping rather than a layer, thin enough that the dough shows through it in patches, and the meat should never be mounded. It is not a pizza and Turks say so with some force when the phrase Turkish pizza is used, the objection being partly about the thickness and partly about the cheese that is not there. What gives it its colour and its particular sweetness is biber salçası, the red pepper paste that sits beside tomato paste in every Turkish kitchen and is made by sun-drying crushed red peppers to a thick dark concentrate. Southeastern Anatolia, around Gaziantep and Şanlıurfa, is where both the paste and the best lahmacun come from, and the regional versions there run hotter, with isot, the near-black smoked Urfa chilli. It belongs to a shared region rather than to a border. Armenian lahmajun and Syrian lahm bi'ajin are the same dish under the same name in different accents, made across Aleppo, Antep, and the Armenian diaspora, and the frontier that now runs between those kitchens was drawn in 1921, several centuries after the pastry.

Ingredients

Dough

  • 400 g plain flour
  • 5 g fast-action dried yeast
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp caster sugar
  • 250 ml warm water
  • 1 tbsp olive oil

Topping

  • 300 g minced lamb, not too lean
  • 1 onion, quartered
  • 1 green pepper, roughly chopped
  • 3 garlic cloves
  • 2 tomatoes, quartered
  • 2 tbsp biber salçası (Turkish red pepper paste)
  • 1 tbsp tomato purée
  • 1 small bunch flat-leaf parsley
  • 1.5 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • 1 tsp isot or Aleppo pepper flakes

To serve

  • 2 lemons, in wedges, to serve
  • 1 large bunch parsley and sliced onion, to serve

Method

  1. Mix the dough ingredients into a soft dough, knead for eight minutes until smooth, and leave to rise covered for an hour.
  2. Blitz the onion, green pepper, garlic, tomatoes, and parsley to a coarse pulp, then tip it into a sieve and press out as much liquid as you can.
  3. This draining step matters. A wet topping steams the dough instead of baking it and gives a soggy lahmacun.
  4. Mix the drained pulp with the lamb, both pastes, salt, cumin, and pepper flakes to a loose spreadable paste.
  5. Heat the oven as high as it will go, at least 250°C, with a baking stone or a heavy upturned tray inside for at least thirty minutes.
  6. Divide the dough into six and roll each piece out as thin as you can manage, about 22cm across. You should almost see the worktop through it.
  7. Spread a very thin layer of topping right to the edges, using the back of a spoon. Two heaped tablespoons per round is plenty; the dough should show through in places.
  8. Slide the lahmacun onto the hot stone and bake for three to five minutes.
  9. It is done when the edges have coloured and the meat is cooked but the base is still pliable. It should fold without cracking, so take it out before it crisps.
  10. Stack the finished ones under a clean cloth as you go, which keeps them soft.
  11. Serve with a heap of parsley and sliced onion and plenty of lemon; each person piles some down the middle, squeezes lemon over, and rolls it up to eat.

Notes

Roll the dough thinner than feels sensible and spread the topping thinner still: the commonest home version is twice as thick as it should be in both directions. Drain the vegetable pulp or the base will not bake. The oven must be at its maximum with a preheated stone, since the whole point is a bake measured in minutes. Biber salçası is sold by Turkish and Middle Eastern grocers and is not the same as tomato paste; if you cannot find it, use a roasted red pepper blitzed with a little tomato purée. Take them out whilst still floppy, because a crisp lahmacun cannot be rolled and rolling it is how it is eaten.

The Gastrographer

The Gastrographer

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Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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