In case you missed reading about the purpose of The Great Lahmajoun Dough Experiment, please click here.
lahmajoun before, I suggested he use his own recipe for the meat-vegetable topping, which he did. All photos are courtesy of Mike Minassian.
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| Final Product: Lahmajoun #1, rolled and ready to eat! |
Dough recipe #1: From the cookbook, ‘Simply Armenian’ by Barbara Ghazarian
Cover with a clean kitchen towel and let stand in a warm place for about 1 1/2 hours, or until doubled in size.
way. After I mixed the dough until smooth and elastic I put it in a bowl, covered with a plastic bag and then a kitchen towel on top (see pictures “dough 1” and “dough 2”).
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| Dough 1 |
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| Dough 2 |
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| Topping photo #1 |
I used 500 gr. (about 1.2 lbs.) beef minced (I’m sorry if I use metric measures sometimes). 2 onions and 2 tomatoes finely chopped, actually I rather like to process them. Some parsley also chopped. Also added 1/4 of a roasted red bell pepper (I made this some weeks ago). At this point I should mention to you that the Armenians here in Argentina, at least in Cordoba, use tomatoes for the topping instead of peppers, though I like to add
some to my recipe.
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| Topping photo #2 |
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| Seasonings for the topping |
The spices I used include salt, paprika, ground chili,
tricolor pepper, chemen (or fenugreek), and hot chili powder. I mixed everything with my hands and then processed all. I do this because I like the topping to stick together after I cook it. For this I also add a tbsp. of white vinegar (apple vinegar). After everything is processed, I added the juice of one lemon and let it stand for an hour in the fridge. This amount of topping is enough for making a bit more than 2 dozen, so I just used half of it this time, and saved the rest for next time.
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| Ready to bake |
After the dough doubled its size, I made the little balls and shape them into disks, put them on the baking sheet (previously covered with flour), added the topping on, and into the oven 250°C – about 475°F – (very hot) for about 10 minutes. That´s it.
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| Baked, stacked, and ready to serve! |
Conclusion:
They were good enough, the dough wasn’t that crispy, I could roll them just
fine, though at some point I could see some cracks in the folding and the borders were a little crispy. I think I can make them a bit thinner, since the baking made them thicker than I expected. They were not as greasy as the Lady’s lahmejouns, but they were good anyway. Next weekend I’ll try a different (dough recipe), probably with some new additions that improves flexibility.
