pizza friday

For as long as I can remember, my mother made homemade pizza every Friday, and she still does.  In the summer, I frequently make pizza on the barbecue, and this pizza, I must say, is excellent.  I usually make what I have named 'BBQ Chicken Pizza', where I coat little pieces of cooked chicken in Diana's BBQ sauce, and drizzle BBQ sauce over the top.  I use mozzerella and parmesan cheese and cook the whole thing on whole wheat dough I made on the barbecue.

Since moving to Turkey, I have been on the quest for a good pizza.  I've ordered from Dominos, Pizza Pizza, Pizza Hut and New York Pizza.  I think I prefer Dominos to the rest, as it tastes the most like Western pizza...but it's still...bland.  There's not much sauce, or cheese and flavour is generally lacking.  I end up coating my slice in salt, pepper and red pepper flakes to try to make up for the lack of flavour, but it doesn't really help.

Then I discovered Kyma's pizzas.  These pizzas are sensational.  If you're reading this in Turkey, please go out and get yourself a Kyma pizza.  Their pizzas are specialty pizzas, like delicious works of art covered in expensive imported cheese.  Their 4 Season Cheese pizza is divided up into 4 sections, each sprinkled with a different kind of cheese.  Their 4 cheese pizza is coated in delicious cheese, including Hellumi cheese.  On a pizza?  Why not?

Last night, Eilidh attempted to re-create my mother's pizza fridays by making a pizza of my own.  I made my own dough, by using my favourite, very simple and easy recipe from 'Eat Shrink and Be Merry' and this is where the substitutions began.  I don't actually have measuring cups, because I don't usually cook or bake anything that requires measuring.  So, I guestimated using a drinking glass and the dough turned out fine.  It even rose properly thanks to the yeast that I found in the grocery store.  Grocery shopping for baking ingredients is not always eas, here.  Things like yeast, baking powder and soda are often packaged completely differently than we're used to seeing them, and of course the names are written on in Turkish.  I found the yeast because Eilidh and I were looking for baking powder and we saw little packets with pictures of bread on it, so we assumed it was yeast, and it turns out that we were right.  We weren't able to find canned pizza sauce (which I'm beginning to think exists only in North America, because I wasn't able to find it in England either, I guess Europeans must make their own), so I used salça (remember this?  I used it to make kisir as well).  Salça is a very thick tomato puree, and the kind I bought is even a little bit sweet.  It's quite thick for pizza sauce, but works well once you put the vegetables and they contribute their juices.  I cut up pieces of chicken and sauted them with a bit of curry powder (as I doubt very much I can find Diana's BBQ sauce here), and we used all the vegetables we happened to have in our fridges; red and green peppers, mushrooms, and tomatoes.  It was actually a great way to use up vegetables left over from the week.  We grated some Eski Kaşarlı cheese, which was a great substitute for mozzerella, even better, actually. 

So, with different cheese, curry powder and salça this pizza was not exactly like my mom's, but it's the best that can be done in Turkey, and Eilidh and I agreed that my pizza is easy to make, better than delivery, most likely healthier than delivery, and a great way to use up leftover veg.  I'm cooking!  Yay!  A pizza friday tradition may be started in Turkey.

I forgot to grease the baking sheet, so I had to hack the pizza up a little to get it off the tray, that's why you see all the crumbs :)  Will remember that for next time.