Saturday night in the Mitchell house is Pizza and Movies night. First we hand made the bases, then the bread machine made them for us, then the bread machine broke for a while and we started buying bases, and REALLY looked hard for a decent pizza base.
We usually do two bases, one with tomato and cheese base and one just brushed with oil. We have all kinds of toppings. One of my favourites is smoked salmon and asparagus with dollops of sour cream on top.
The Lebanese topping comes from Arabesque by Greg and Lucy Malouf. This is an excellent book about Middle Eastern cooking by two well-known restaurant figures in Melbourne. The index focuses on the ingregients that make this style of cooking unique - almonds and apricots, cardamom and cinnamon, dates and figs, honey and lemons, pomegranates and saffron, and lots more. There are excellent spices mixes - harissa, chermoula, za'atar, great recipes for various kinds of poultry, lamb and more, and all kinds of ways to use fruit both in main courses and desserts. One of my top cookbooks!
INGREDIENTS
40 ml olive oil
40 g pine nuts
1 sml onion
1 clove garlic
180 g minced lamb
1 tomato
1 teasp pomegranate molasses
½ teasp allspice
½ teasp cinnamon
¼ teasp black blpper
½ teasp salt
½ teasp sumac
Fry the pine nuts over medium heat until they are golden brown. Remove and drain.
Chop onion and tomato finely. Fry onion until soft. Add garlic and lamb mince and cook until meat in browned. Add pine nuts, tomato, pomegranate molasses amd spices and stir well. Remove from heat.
Spread topping on pizza and bake for 15-20 mins.
Serve with dollops of yoghurt on top. Beautiful!
ahhhh, you are sincerely the kindest man ever! This completely rocks...even better than Cheap Trick at Budokan (the first one, naturally).
Posted by: chris | August 31, 2005 at 11:01 AM
Glad you liked it. I saw Cheap Trick live at Bruce Stadium in Canberra in 1979 supported by Mi-Sex (that was an Australian band, not the after-show party!) Mind you, I've since been married to the woman who sat next to me for 24 years! But enough of that....
Posted by: craigmitchell | August 31, 2005 at 07:29 PM
I saw KISS in 1978 at the Houston...gosh, I don't remember. At any rate, wasn't with my wife though. I'm not proud, but the tank was cool!
Posted by: chris | September 03, 2005 at 08:48 AM