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When you think about Middle Eastern pizzas -- and if you do, you're my kind of person -- you probably mean lahmajoun, the Armenian specialty that's spelled lahmacun in Turkish and lahm bi-‘ajin in Arabic. It's topped with chopped meat mixed with a little spicy tomato sauce.
But there are other pizzas in the region that don't involve tomatoes at all. They're topped with lamb or cheese.
The Turkish city of Konya has a long and rich history, which the locals are very happy to tell you all about. In the 13th century, it was the home ground of the Sufi poet Rumi, known as Mevlana in Turkish, who is renowned for unexpected mystical pronouncements such as "Either be what you seem to be or seem to be what you are."
And it has a distinctive cuisine. The food writer Nevin Halici (her last name is pronounced HAH-luh-juh) lives in Konya and is very proud of her city's food traditions. A couple of years ago she took me to a place specializing in the local varieties of pizza. They had the usual toppings, except that the cheese pizza (peynirli ekmek) was topped with küflü peynir, Konya's excellent blue cheese.
Like all Middle Eastern cheese pizzas, Konya blue cheese pizza tends to have an herb in it, mint being the area-wide favorite, but it might as easily be parsley, thyme or dill. I suppose I like mint best, but dill does go pretty well with blue cheese. A bit of hot pepper usually shows up too, either in the form of minced green chile or a dash of ground red pepper.
Küflü peynir is a semi-hard cheese and is chopped and crumbled to make the topping. You can get pre-crumbled blue cheese in supermarkets these days, but it tends to be excessively salty, so I generally prefer to buy my blue cheese non-crumbled. If you don't like blue cheese, the usual feta-type white cheese is also used, and even ricotta, known as lor in Turkish.
Peynirli Ekmek
Makes 2 medium pizzas, 8 appetizer slices
Ingredients
¾ cup warm water
1 tablespoon yeast
2 cups flour
½ teaspoon salt
8 ounces blue cheese, crumbled
2 eggs
1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint, parsley, dill or thyme
1-2 teaspoons minced serrano chiles or other hot green pepper
2-4 tablespoons cornmeal
Directions
- Put the yeast into the water and wait until a bloom appears on the surface of the water. Stir the flour and salt together, then add the yeast water and mix, adding more water or yeast as needed to make a smooth, easily handled dough. Knead hard for 10 minutes. Transfer to a mixing bowl, and cover with a clean dishtowel until the dough has doubled in volume, about 1 hour.
- Mix the cheese, eggs, herbs and chiles.
- Place a baking sheet or pizza stone in the oven and turn on the heat to 400 F.
- Punch down the dough and divide it into 2 balls. Roll or stretch each ball into a rough circle about 9 inches in diameter. Sprinkle the cornmeal on a work surface and set the circles on it. (Depending on the available area on your pizza stone or baking sheet, you may have to bake the pizzas in two batches; while one batch is cooking, cover the rest of the dough with a clean dishtowel to keep it from drying out.)
- When you're ready to bake a pizza, spread half of the cheese mixture on the surface with your fingers. Transfer the pizza to the baking sheet or pizza stone using an oven peel, a pair of large spatulas or your fingers, and bake until the dough is golden brown and the cheese is partly browned on top, about 20-25 minutes.
Charles Perry is a former rock 'n' roll journalist turned food historian who worked for the Los Angeles Times' award-winning Food section, where he twice was a finalist for the James Beard award.
Photo: Peynirli Ekmek. Credit: Charles Perry.
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You could try doing without, though. They certainly don't add eggs when the topping is chopped meat (though that might reflect the fact that eggs and meat rarely go together in the area anyway).