Shrimp and Feta Pizza

I love to cook.  That's pretty obvious because of this blog, right?  But at the risk of going all Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret, sometimes cooking for a picky 3-year-old can be a drag.  I think the most disappointing part is that while I haven't submitted my application for traveling food freak should the Weird Foods host up and quit, I'm a fairly adventurous eater.  So when my son started solid foods, I made my own baby food so that he could experience good cuisine at an early age.

How on earth did I end up with a child whose culinary daring doesn't wander far beyond edamame and salmon?

I'm probably grumpy because dinner, aside from Mr. Finicky's exclamations of "I don't like...!" fifty-seven times during the meal, was fairly disastrous.  We love homemade pizza in our house, so it was par for the course for me to make my own pizza dough in my bread maker.  But a crying baby and high humidity created a finished dough ball that was more ectoplasm than pizza.  This was remedied with a mad dash to Whole Foods for pizza dough.  (I ended up getting their multigrain dough and it's fantastic, by the way.)  And my need for Hooked on Phonics created the second dinner debacle: overlooking the word "grilled" in the recipe.  We have a community grill at our condo, but the hurdles to grilling more than steak are limitless. 

So what happened?  I'll share with you the recipe I made, not what I was supposed to make.

Shrimp and Feta Pizza 

3/4 lb medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 onion, sliced into rounds
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing
1/2 tsp dried oregano
salt and pepper
1 lb prepared pizza dough at room temperature
1 cup cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1/2 cup crumbled feta cheese

1. Move oven rack to lowest level in the oven and preheat to 500 degrees F.  Toss shrimp and onion in a bowl with olive oil, oregano and salt and pepper.

2.  Stretch pizza dough onto a pizza pan and brush the outer crust with olive oil.  Bake in the heated oven for 5 minutes.  Meanwhile, cook shrimp and onions in a skillet sprayed with cooking spray over medium-high heat until the shrimp begin to turn pink.

3.  Remove crust from the oven and top with shrimp, onions, tomatoes and feta.  Return to the oven and cook for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, or until crust is golden brown.  Transfer to a cutting board and cut into pieces.

The Verdict: Adults loved it.  Child dissected it like it was a high school biology experiment.

My son didn't like the grape tomatoes nor the onions; in other words, he didn't eat any of the vegetables.  Quel surprise.  He was also a little leery of the feta cheese.  He did, however, eat every bit of shrimp and crust given to him. 

As you can see in the picture, if it weren't for the tomatoes, this pizza would be pretty boring to the eye.  This is one place where the grilled vs. oven-cooked differences comes in.  The grilled pizza is has lovely little charred bits on the crust and the shrimp; the oven-baked pizza is largely white.  And because I didn't grill it, I can only guess about the next part and that is the sogginess factor.  Pizza, especially when it's homemade, runs the risk of being soggy.  It's in part because most of us don't have a pizza oven (but Lord, how I wish to have an outdoor brick oven someday!) that heats up to blazing temperatures, but it's also expertly stretching the dough and topping the pizza. 

Shrimp tends to let out a lot of moisture as it cooks, and of course, feta cheese is a high-moisture cheese.  In order not to end up with a soggy middle, drain the shrimp and dab with a paper towel after you cook it.  And squeeze out your feta before crumbling. 

Besides being too soft in the middle, the taste was fantastic.  It smells delicious as it cooks, too.  The oregano is slightly lemony, making it a perfect herb to pair with shrimp.  The feta gives the pizza a nice, salty tang and, when the tomatoes are added in, a great Mediterranean flair. 

Too bad the little critic didn't like it as much as we did.  But I'll keep trying.

Lahmacun (Turkish Pizza)

Lahmacun (pronounced lah-mah-jhoon) is probably the only recipe that calls for copious amounts of parsley that I love. For whatever reason, the mix of meats, vegetables and spices seems to negate some of that sharp parsley taste that disagrees with me.

Lahmacun is a very thin pizza without cheese. It's topped with ground lamb, onions, garlic, parsley and spices, then baked until golden brown. You can use store bought pizza dough, or if you have a bread machine, you can make your own. (You can, of course, make your own without a bread machine but I like dumping it all the ingredients into one place and letting it do all the work for me.) My pizza dough recipe comes from The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys homemade bread. Furthermore, Beth Hensperger suggests using SAF yeast when making breads. After some experimentation, I've come to realize she knows what she's talking about. If you're going to make your own anything in the bread machine, get yourself a bag of this yeast. It lasts forever and makes beautiful doughs and breads.

The recipe for lahmacun is a combination of many different recipes. If you find that you like lahmacun, play with the ingredients yourself. Just remember to stretch your dough very, very thinly to create very thin crust. It still tastes great with a thicker crust, but it's not as authentic.

Beware! This makes a LOT of pizza--six or eight smallish pizzas! Because it's thin, more than likely you'll eat one per adult. But with a small family, you'll definitely have leftovers.

Lahmacun

For the dough:

1 1/3 cups water

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

3 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1 tbsp sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp SAF yeast or 2 1/2 tsp bread machine yeast

1. Add ingredients to your bread machine according to the manufacturer's directions. Set to dough cycle. Take out of the machine immediately and divide into desired number of portions. Flatten each portion into a disc. Cover with a damp towel and let rest for 30 minutes until the dough has increased in size by 20%.

2. Roll out and shape dough. Lahmacun are not perfectly round, so the more lopsided, the better. Or place dough in plastic food storage bags and refridgerate for up to 24 hours. To use, let rest for 20 minutes at room temperature before rolling out.

For the lahmacun topping:

1 lb ground lamb (or 1/2 lb ground lamb, 1/2 lb ground beef)

1 large onion, finely chopped

2 tbsp garlic, chopped

2 tbsp olive oil

1 bunch parsley, finely chopped

1 large tomato, peeled and finely chopped

2 tbsp tomato paste

1/2 jalapeño pepper, finely chopped

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp chili pepper

salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Heat olive oil in a skillet and add onion and garlic. Cook until onion is translucent. Set aside and let cool.

2. In a large bowl, combine rest of ingredients as well as onion and garlic mixture. Mix very well until mixture resembles a thick paste.

3. Roll out dough into ovals that are approximately 6-x 8-inches in diameter. Spread about 4-5 heaping tablespoons of lamb mixture over each. Place one or two on a large cookie sheet (whatever fits) and cook for 10-15 minutes; crust should be golden brown and topping should be browned as well. Cover cooked lahmacun with a towel as subsequent pizzas are cooked. Serve immediately.

The Verdict: Gosh, these are yummy. Like, "my belly hurts because I didn't stop eating in time" yummy.

Kind of like pancakes, I find that my first couple of crusts that I roll out aren't quite right. In my case, they're too thick. But like I mentioned above, while that's not traditional, it still tastes fantastic.

My husband and I both enjoyed them immensely (hence "my belly hurts"...although that might just have been me) and my son ate a couple of small slices. He recognized it as pizza by site, but his American senses weren't fooled by taste. The excitement of pizza for dinner quickly faded. If you have a child who loves pizza, call it lahmacun to avoid any disappointment.

I know some people see lamb as an ingredient and keep searching for a dinner recipe. Before you dismiss this because of that, consider making it with just ground beef. I've even made it with ground turkey before. While I try to limit our lamb consumption (yeah, I'm one of those suckers who can't separate "but it's a lamb--a fluffy, cute lamb!"), I do still love it. And if given the choice of turkey or lamb, I'm going to choose lamb. That slightly gamey flavor is part of the appeal of the dish.