I had read a local restaurant review in last weekend's newspaper, and in the article a mention was made that an item called Turkish pizza was on the menu. It went on to explain that an enquiry elicited the information that it was really pide, a Turkish dish that seemed like a regional take on traditional Italian pizza. It gave the pide high marks, and I was curious so I looked up recipes online and found quite a few, some simple some more complex. I thought I'd give it a try myself.

So yesterday that's just what I did. The traditional pide is kind of boat-shaped, with a cooked mixture of onion, spices and browned beef heaped onto the dough, then baked at a high temperature until browned. I looked over quite a few recipes and finally settled on one at the allrecipes.com site labelled Lahmacun Turkish Pizza. I found it intriguing for the sauce they recommend and the dressing, so I thought why not?

I had earlier prepared pizza dough, an easy enough recipe with just yeast, (tiny bit of sugar to help it rise), salt, water, flour and a spare drizzle of olive oil. In the afternoon I chopped up the green and red peppers, tomato and cumin, olive oil, lemon, paprika, basil, onion and garlic into a fine slurry with my tiny processor meant just for such little kitchen jobs. Then I did the simple dressing which was just a cup of plain yoghurt mixed with a crushed clove of garlic and parsley.

At dinner time, I rolled out four rounds of dough, shaping them into rough boat-shapes and let them sit on a fine cornmeal-dusted baking pan while I stirred a quarter-pound of minced beef in a frypan with virgin olive oil until it was completely browned, then added the processed vegetables along with tomato paste, mixed it all together and dumped the result onto the waiting 'boats'.

I popped the finished product into a hot oven and they were nicely browned by the time we finished our fresh garden salad. I had added a small strip of Provolone cheese when they were almost fully baked. The little filled boats were different, and quite pleasant. Both of us really liked the way the crust itself turned out; crisp and chewy and flavourful. We liked the melange of flavours, but felt we could dispense with the beef in perhaps another incarnation, focusing instead on the vegetables, and perhaps a mixture of cheeses.

Cut-up mangoes and strawberries put the cap on dinner quite nicely.