Sultan's Table

Well dinner is going to be a little late today. I had to go back to the hospital to operate so when I would have been cooking in the afternoon I was doing my other favorite thing.

So how do you make pita bread you ask? Well the Turkish name of the recipe I am making tonight is Susamli ve Corek Otlu Pide Ekmergi. This translates to Pita Bread Topped with Sesame and Black Caraway Seeds. The Turkish recipes I am making tonight are from the book Sultan's Kitchen. I don't have any other Turkish cookbooks and I recently just got this one from Amazon. It is really excellent because of all of the superb pictures. The recipes are easy and well explained with ingredients that you can mostly find at the store. If you have any interest in making and eating delicious food, I highly recommend you get this book. If you could eat at my house tonight I am very serious, your head would explode. I give this book a 5 head exploding rating out of a possible 5. Your neurons might not be able to handle the excellent food contained in this book, mine can't possibly.

So anyway went to Sam's Club and bought a 3.5 pound boneless leg of lamb. It was 12 dollars. This makes it only a little more expensive than ground beef, and I can get at least 5 meals out of this much lamb. What I do is cut out the best parts to make into kebobs on the grill. The scraps and fat I make into ground lamb using the grinder attachment to the Kitchenaid Mixer. Amazon has one listed for $159 which is an amazing price on one. I have one and use it constantly. My Grandmother has had one for decades. They make a lot of things easier and if you do a lot of cooking or baking you should look into one if you don't have one already. I will talk about this mixer a lot on this webpage, because besides this little dinky $20 food processor I bought at Walmart, the mixer is the kitchen implement I use the most.

This recipe makes a huge amount of pita breads, so you might want to cut it in half. I have simplified the recipe from Sultan's Kitchen. I hope he doesn't get pissed at me. I bought the book and I encourage you to as well.

1 package yeast
1 3/4 cup warm water
1 t sugar

4 cups flour
2 t salt

Combine yeast and water and sugar and let the yeast start bubbling to make sure it is active. Add the flour and salt and beat with your mixer for 10 minutes or so. Let rise until double in size.

glaze:
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup milk
1 1/2 T sesame seeds
1 T black caraway seeds

Mix the eggs and the milk together to make the glaze. Take the dough and divide it and make it into balls. Roll out into 8 inch round pieces, about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Glaze each piece of dough with the glaze and sprinkle with the seeds. Hopefully you have preheated your oven to 450 and you have a baking stone in there heating up nice. Drop the dough rounds one at a time onto the stone. The pitas will be lightly golden on top when they are done.

I gotta go cook. I'll post the recipes for the stuffed eggplant and kebobs tomorrow.