not dead yet - turkish pide

Although I've let a significant length of time pass, I'm determined not to let this blog die a dishonourable death.  It merely brings to light the fact that these pages were brought to life during a short (4-day) period in which I actually had time on my hands to kill, and that circumstance simply does not apply to real life.

The other day during the whole what-am-I-making-for-dinner rigmarole I decided on something pizza-like, but did not have anything to make tomato sauce with: namely, tomatoes.  (Coincidentally, in the most literal sense of the word, my mother claims that she was thinking pizza and was trying her best to telepathically send that thought into my brain...)  I remembered an experience while staying in Istanbul where our hosts decided to order in on a whim; it wasn't even mealtime, but they felt we needed to experience this particular aspect of Turkish cuisine.  They phoned their local favourite, and within a short while a delivery arrived at our door: elongated rectangular cardboard boxes.  We opened them to find a new kind of Turkish delight: pide.

FYI, it's pronounced kind of like how we say the word "pita" but with a bit softer t/d sound, even though it looks like "p-eye-d"

It really is basically a Turkish pizza: the dough is essentially the same yeasted flat bread, and you order different toppings as you like and can commonly order it for delivery.  However, pide don't usually rely on a tomato-based sauce, and more noticeably, they are shaped into long boat-like figures capable of holding more substantial fillings rather than merely toppings.  Two particularly distinct toppings we tried in Turkey were egg (cracked into the boat in the last few minutes of cooking) and pastirma, the smelliest most garlicky cured beef ever.  Like many delicacies, pastirma is an acquired taste, but once you get it, you really get it.

So I decided that eating pide a few times in Turkey qualified me to make my own here at home (arrogant, I know).  Basically I just made pizza dough, which was easy enough, and rolled them out into long rectangles (actually my daughter helped considerably in the rolling out).  Next was layering some toppings (I borrowed from some Italian classics, but mostly just threw in whatever I had in the kitchen that would work - improvising!): mushrooms, bell pepper, some very dry salami, shredded cheese (I think I had asiago and jack cheese that day) some olives and anchovy fillets.  Then the ends of the rectangle were folded up into points and the sides were folded partially over the toppings.  I brushed the outside of the boat with egg wash and threw them in the hottest oven I could muster (the LED said 550F, who knows how close I actually got to that).  After the pide had a few (maybe 5-10 min) to let the dough bake, I took them out to crack a raw egg into each one, then tossed them back in for a few more minutes to let the egg almost set.  Aside: I don't own a pizza stone, and the floor of my oven to too filthy to put things directly on it, but I do own a fancy baking sheet thingy that has maybe a vacuum layer inside it or something?  I'm not quite sure about the construction, but it is the most amazing thing ever, keeping the heat distribution even throughout the oven no matter what I'm baking.  If I knew what it was,I would wholeheartedly endorse it to you, whoever you are.

Of course after pulling it out of the oven I was too eager to serve it, and so I silced it into pieces before remembering to take this picture, but you get the idea:

salami and egg pide

I kind of like how the toppings go in reverse from a pizza, with the cheese hidden in the lower decks of the boat, and having the egg add richness so that we don't really miss having lots of meat, just a few pieces of something salty (dry salami or anchovy) to give it some bite.  FWIW the dough was made with a mix of organic unbleached white all-purpose and some local hard red spring whole wheat acquired through the amazing grain co-op Urban Grains.

Hmm, maybe next time I'll write about Japanese pizza: okonomiyaki.  Especially since there is no decent okonomiyaki served in Vancouver to my knowledge (except my house maybe).  Although I'd love to be proven wrong there.

P.S. I just finished reading Jeffery Steingarten's latest article on hand-pulled noodles in NYC.  Inexplicably, the table of contents in Vogue blurbs about Steingarten eating "pasta" and not Chinese noodles.  The article reminded me that the Sha-lin Noodle House on Broadway is closed, thanks to a neighboring fire.  Does anyone know if they have set up shop in a new location or anything?  Are there any other hand-pulled noodle shops in the city?