Home-made pide

Home-made pide

I’m on a post-Christmas budget at the moment. I’ve been pulling things from the freezer, and making delicious meals on the cheap. I had a little lamb mince left in the freezer from when I made stuffed orange capsicums, and thought I could make a great Friday night dinner with it if I whipped up some fresh dough and tried my hand making pide. For balance, I can never merely serve meat and carb. Besides, my favourite pide is spinach and feta. I wandered down to the local store, and bought a bunch of spinach and some basic Australian feta cheese for less than five dollars. I would have used about a third of the spinach in this and will use the rest another time. I guess I’d have used about three dollars of lamb mince, but everything else was stock standard fridge/pantry ingredients.

I’ve really taken a liking to this za’atar mix I was given a while back. The one I have came from The Essential Ingredient who now have an online shop. It’s been popping up in a few recipes (most notably the delicious za’atar crusted chicken) and it worked wonders here too. I think you should get yourself a jar. It’s a great way to add a little citrus zing and a nice herby flavour to a dish.

I made one of each of these. If you only want to make one flavour, merely double the filling ingredients, or halve the dough to make just the one pide.

Makes 2 pide

Pide dough

1	cup	very hot water
¼	teaspoon	salt
¼	teaspoon	sugar
7	grams	fresh yeast
2	cups	bread flour
		olive oil, for drizzling before it goes in the oven

Spinach and feta filling

½	teaspoon	olive oil
½		onion, finely diced
1	clove	garlic, crushed
½	teaspoon	za’atar
1	cup (packed)	chopped, fresh spinach
150	grams	feta, crumbled

Lamb filling

2	teaspoons	olive oil
½		onion, finely diced
1	clove	garlic, crushed
½		carrot, finely diced
½	stick	celery, finely diced
1	tablespoon	tomato puree
½	teaspoon	dried oregano
2	teaspoons	za’atar
200	grams	lamb mince

To make the dough: mix together the yeast, hot water, sugar and salt. Then slowly add the flour, mixing with your hand. You want a soft dough that holds together. It should fall from your fingers when it’s ready, but you can use a tiny bit of flour to get it off your hands. Cover with a damp tea towel and leave to proof in a warm place for two hours.

Remove the dough from the bowl, and knock it back, kneading briefly to disperse the air pockets and yeast. Divide the dough in half, one portion will be for each of your pide. Work with one portion of dough at a time, covering the other with the damp tea towel.

To make the lamb filling: sautee the onion, garlic, carrot and celery in the olive oil till soft. Add the tomato paste and heat till fragrant. Add the oregano and zaatar, combine and allow to cool before adding the lamb mince. Combine thoroughly.

To make the spinach and feta filling: sautee the onion and garlic in the oil. Combine the spinach, feta, za’atar and sautéed garlic and onion. When you are arranging the spinach and feta filling on the pide dough, be very generous because the spinach will shrink down a lot in the oven; I used every scrap of this to fill one pide.

To assemble the pide: preheat the oven to 250^oC.

Flour a board or clean work surface. Knead the portion of dough till it feels elastic and smooth. This should take about five minutes. Press the dough into a large oval shape on a greased oven tray. Arrange your chosen filling in the middle of the oval. Fold the edges up, so they partially cover the filling, and twist the ends to secure the shape of the dough. Drizzle with olive oil. Bake at 250^oC for about 15 minutes, till the dough is golden and the filling cooked. Remove from the oven and allow to rest for a couple of minutes, so the cooking juices are absorbed into the dough. Then cut into slices and serve.