It’s like pizza, with a Turkish twist!

“Pide” is a Turkish dish that, while it doesn’t really reign from pizza, has kind of adopted the reference of “Turkish pizza” to westerners. Except with butter on it.  You might be thinking, “Buttery pizza? Whaaaaaa?” Just try it, you’ll love it.

I’m not sure that this is exactly “Black Sea” Turkish pide, because I couldn’t find a recipe for that specific type of pide. I had to create my own spice blend. However, this does don the runny eggs of the pide from that region of Turkey.

This recipe took a bit of tweaking to get it right, or at least, close. Luckily we just found a great Turkish restaurant a few days prior so the flavor and texture of everything were fresh in my memory. From all the recipes I found, the dough is the exact same recipe I use for a quick rising homemade pizza dough. So, of course, I decided to use store-bought pizza dough to save the extra step. The only issue is that the dough for pide is a little flakier; almost as if it’s phyllo dough in one big lump instead of really thin sheets. I addressed this by spreading butter on it and folding it up to re-roll out, kind of like you do with croissants (but a little more loosey goosey). It worked, creating a slightly flakier crust. I did it twice. You could do it once, thrice, or not at all if you really don’t want to do the extra work.

I also had to do some tweaking with the butter over the pizza. Originally, I had put pats of cold butter on the pizza before baking it (but under the eggs). The result was decidedly not buttery enough. When I bite into pide, I want “Oh, butter!” to pop into my head. I solved this by melting butter and pouring it over the top. How’s that for your Mediterranean diet?

Turkish Pide

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Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1lb ground venison
• 1 yellow onion (diced)
• 4 cloves garlic (minced)
• 2 tablespoons cumin
• 1 tablespoon ground coriander
• 2 roma tomatoes (seeded and diced)
• juice of one lemon
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 stick butter (room temperature)
• 2 pre made pizza dough rolls
• 1 cup well melting cheese (like mozzarella or queso quesadilla, grated)
• 1 egg (beaten for egg wash)
• 4-6 eggs
• 1/2-1 stick butter (melted)

Directions

Step 1

Heat the oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook until soft. Then add the spices and salt and pepper to taste. Add the meat until brown and continue to cook until some of the moisture evaporates off. Add the tomatoes and lemon juice and continue to cook until the tomatoes slightly soften. Set aside.

Step 2

Preheat the oven to 350. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the pizza dough. Spread about 1/2 of the room temperature butter over the surface of the dough and fold. If you want to use more butter, you can spread more in between each fold. Repeat the process. Then, roll the dough out into a circle. It can be "rustic." Repeat with the other ball of dough.

Step 3

Move the circle of dough to a foil-lined baking sheet or hot pizza stone before filling. Add equal parts cheese and meat mixture to each pizza dough right down the middle, then fold up the sides to create a little boat. Brush the edges with the egg wash. Depending on how runny you like your eggs, you can top with the eggs now or bake for a few minutes before adding the eggs. Bake for about 20 minutes, or until crust is golden brown and eggs are at your desired consistency. For soft yokes, bake the pides for about 5 minutes before cracking the eggs on top. When finished, pour the melted butter over the pides.

Non-game substitution: Ground lamb or ground beef is the traditional filling for this.

Vegetarian substitution: You can really put anything you want in there, from mixed vegetables to spinach and feta to cheese only. Just don’t forget the butter!