♪ ♪ - This feels like a toy knife to me right now.

I'm going back to this thing.

There you go!

Now I feel like I'm really cooking.

- Uh, that's so good.

There's so much flavor in here.

And, as you saw, hardly any ingredients.

- It's tangy from that yogurt sauce, the Aleppo butter is beautifully warm, and that runny yolk plus the fresh herbs-- can't beat it.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (birds cawing) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Today I'm here in Istanbul, Turkey, of course.

You know, I haven't been here since 1972 as a student, and everything has changed.

It's a very modern city.

It's a very big city of 17 million people.

There's lots of traffic jams.

(chuckling): It's worse than L.A. And there's tons of people on the street, tons of small shops, lots of food on the street.

It's a very exciting place to be.

Now, two things have not changed: cats.

There are lots of cats in Istanbul, all of them well fed, by the way.

And, of course, the food.

Now, some of the food are things you probably are not familiar with.

A mackerel sandwich, which is basically fish on bread.

And also some of the other things you are familiar with, like Turkish delight, there are plenty of those stores around, of course, baklava, which comes from the southern part of Turkey, near Syria.

And those are familiar things to most of us.

Now, as you walk the streets, there are a couple of other things we love to do here.

There's pickle shops, as in Lebanon, people love to have pickles with their food.

They actually drink pickle juice as sort of a health tonic.

And the spice shops as well.

Amazing spices here.

Today we're going to travel across the Bosphorus to the Asian side, Anatolia side.

And there we're going to take a look at a couple of recipes.

Lahmajoun, which you probably are familiar with.

It's a pizza, except it's better.

It has a much thinner, lighter dough, and then a spiced meat sauce on top.

Very often it's rolled up and eaten.

It's incredibly delicate compared to a classic, let's say, Neapolitan pizza.

And then a lentil soup, which is thickened with grated potatoes.

Very easy to make.

Very delicious.

It's something you could have as supper any night of the week.

So we're back to Turkey, it's a whole new place for me and we're going to take a look at those two recipes, lahmajoun and lentil soup, so please stay with us.

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - My father brought me here and his father before him.

So, it's not only the pickles we are talking about here, but the culture and the heritage overall, I think, it's quite neat.

♪ ♪ - So we're in the market in Kadiköy, one of my favorite markets to shop, where a couple of places make a really beautiful lahmajoun.

Lahmajoun is a flatbread, like a pizza, and it's, it's sort of... it's got less yeast than a pizza dough.

So it's sort of under leavened, it's rolled out very thin, and then it's topped with a mixture of meat, usually lamb, and, and vegetables that are chopped really fine.

And then they spread it all the way to the edges on this dough so that there isn't a lip.

And then as it cooks, the meat and the vegetable juices sort of get absorbed by the bread.

And then you squeeze a lot of lemon over it.

And then you can either fold it and eat it sort of like a thin, stuffed flat bread, or roll it up.

Or cut it into wedges.

Either way.

♪ ♪ - (speaking Turkish): ♪ ♪ (stick blender whirring) (indistinct chatter) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - You know, I recently went to Istanbul and I met Ana Sortun, who's a restaurateur from Boston.

Oleana is her most famous restaurant.

She's been there 30 times.

She took me around and we went across the Bosphorus, it's about a 15 minutes ferry ride to Anatolia, the Asian side, and we went to, among other places, a little shop that makes lahmajoun.

Now, lahmajoun is essentially a spiced meat pie.

They use lamb or beef and lamb.

And Ana, who's been there so many times, actually came up with a recipe for this, which is what we're going to make today.

The only difference is, in Istanbul or Anatolia, they tend to use a pretty thin dough.

And so when it comes out of the oven, they roll it up and eat it that way, like a rolled up sandwich.

This one has a slightly thicker dough because it's easier to deal with at home.

Otherwise, it's really the same thing.

So we have almost 300 grams of flour.

We have some yeast... Sugar and salt.

And we're just going to mix that up for a few seconds to start.

(switches mixer off) Now we're going to add the water.

This is about 235 grams of water.

The flour is a little under 300 grams, so it's about an 80% hydration dough.

That means the weight of the water divided by the weight of the flour, it's about 80%.

And that's a fairly high hydration, which is not atypical of pizza doughs, because you want the texture to have a little bit of bubbling.

And, finally, oil.

So we're going to mix this for about three minutes till it starts to come together, and then we'll increase the speed for about another ten minutes to get a fully kneaded ball of dough.

So that looks good.

It's come away from the sides of the bowl, it's been another ten minutes or so.

So we're going to oil the bowl first.

I tend to use very little oil for most doughs, but this is a wet dough, so I have a little bit of extra oil there.

So we're going to put that off to the side.

So, since it is so sticky, I am going to use some flour.

I like to finish dough by hand.

Okay.

Then I'm going to form it into a taut ball by using your hands that go down underneath the sides like that.

And I'm going to put it top side down to start to oil up the dough so it doesn't dry out on top.

And now we're going to let that sit until it about doubles.

The problem with every bread recipe is they always give you a time which is absolutely, totally meaningless because it depends on your kitchen.

Ideally, you want a warm kitchen that's 70 or 72 degrees, but you do want to watch for the dough doubling in size, which in this case will take about an hour, we hope.

So now it's on to the spiced meat topping.

We'll start with, you can use a red pepper or this pepper, Doesn't really matter.

Just cut slabs off.

And then half a red onion.

And some garlic.

We also have a little bit of parsley.

We have a pound of lamb.

You could use beef.

We have spices, we have Aleppo pepper, we have oregano, we have cumin, and finally, sumac.

These are little red berries.

They're dried and turned into really a powder.

They're a little tart and citrusy, so they make a nice mix.

Next, add the salt, and then a little bit of tomato paste.

And now the moment I've been waiting for.

You know, when I was in Antakya, and also in Istanbul, I noticed...

I feel like this is the Julia Child moment, right?

With the huge whisk.

This is the kind of knife they used when they were taking meat, and spices, and vegetables and getting them really finely chopped and meshed together.

And I watched a guy do this for about half an hour.

I was mesmerized.

So now I'm going to the normal knife.

But that actually worked pretty well.

But I have to say, I watched someone do this in Antakya, he would have done this whole thing in about 20 seconds.

It's a lifetime of experience.

So I'll just use the smaller knife now and go through.

Okay, we're almost done.

Now we have the grated tomato on top.

And we'll put that through.

This feels like a toy knife to me right now.

I'm going back to this thing.

Feels so much better.

There you go.

Now I feel like I'm really cooking.

Thanks to our small Turkish knife, we're all set.

We're going to put this in a bowl in the fridge, and then we're going to start working on our dough.

So the dough is now risen nicely, and we're going to have to divide this into 12 pieces.

So I'll start in half.

We have to get six pieces out of each of these.

Okay.

Now we're going to form each one into a small ball.

So we have our 12 balls of dough and we'll let this rest and rise for 30 minutes.

And then we'll get on to shaping and topping our lahmajoun.

♪ ♪ So we're going to do this in two parts.

We're going to start by pushing these out to being maybe four inches or so.

Then we're going to top them and continue shaping them when they're topped.

So we're going to use about a third of a cup of the spiced meat mixture, approximately for each.

And what we're going to do is push down a little bit.

You don't want to flatten it, so it's really strong push.

You want to gently do this and sort of make them maybe about six inches when you're finished in diameter, a little more and sort of dimple it, right?

So these go into a very hot 450 oven for 14 to 17 minutes.

You want to make sure the bottoms get nicely browned.

And we'll put these in the oven and then we'll come back and finish up these lahmajoun.

They look great, right?

I mean, these are mini pizzas, good for a mezze or for an appetizer with drinks.

You could have two or three of them for dinner as well.

Traditionally, in Turkey, you would sprinkle with parsley and also a little bit of lemon juice just before you eat it.

But it has this great flavor.

Just terrific flavor with all the spices and the sofrito and the meat.

Mm.

It's pretty good, you know.

So if you want a little taste of Turkey, actually taste the Middle East-- you can find variations on this theme all over-- you might want to try Ana Sortun's lahmajoun.

It has just a great spiced meat topping and a nice, chewy, thin crust.

♪ ♪ - Red lentil soup is a classic soup you'll find all over Turkey.

There are probably about as many variations as there are households in Turkey.

I like to call it a back pocket recipe.

So you learn the basics, then you put it in your back pocket, bring it out every once in a while, make some changes to it, change the liquid, change the spices, add some potatoes or rice to bulk it up.

And that's what we're going to do with our version.

It's red lentil soup with potatoes and lemon.

All right, so we're going to start with the aromatics.

I'm going to prep an onion.

Just run your knife over it if you want to make the pieces a little bit smaller.

All right, now I'm going to add some oil to the pan.

This is a third a cup of oil, which is kind of a lot of oil, but it's going to add a lot of flavor to this soup.

There's not that much that's going to go in here, so every ingredient counts.

(sizzles loudly) So I'm going to add the onion.

And some garlic.

And a teaspoon of salt.

And we're just going to let that cook until the onion has softened.

That'll take about five minutes.

So the onions are nice and soft and golden brown.

We can add our next ingredients.

Now, some versions use a Turkish red pepper paste.

We're going to kind of mimic that by adding two different ingredients.

So I'm going to add a little bit of tomato paste.

And with the tomato paste, we'll add some paprika and cumin, and we'll let this cook first, and then we'll add the other ingredient that's going to mimic that pepper paste.

All right, and now we can add our red lentils.

Red lentils are great because they cook a lot faster than, say, brown or green lentils.

We're going to add some potatoes to ours for a little bit of bulk and heft, and then roasted red peppers.

Now, this is the pepper that's going to mimic that pepper paste.

And the liquid for our soup in this case is just water.

And then, lastly, some salt and pepper.

So I'm going to bring this to a simmer.

Then we'll lower the heat, cover it, and let that cook for about 30 minutes.

♪ ♪ All right, it's time for the big reveal.

It's been 30 minutes, so the soup is ready.

We have just one more thing to do here.

We're going to add a little bit of lemon juice, and this is an essential part of the recipe.

I'm going to add the lemon juice and then just let it sit for about five minutes.

That's going to kind of mellow the really acidic bite of the lemon juice and make it a little more complex.

Now, this soup is classically served pureed.

We really liked the texture of leaving it sort of rustic.

It's also easier.

It skips one step in the soup.

All right, I'm going to just give it a taste, check the seasoning.

That's so good.

It needs a little bit of salt.

Oh, that's so good.

You can taste the pepper.

It's got a little bit of texture from the lentils, and it's just smoky from that paprika.

There's so much flavor in here, and as you saw, hardly any ingredients.

Let's serve a bowl.

♪ ♪ Put a little bit of parsley on for some freshness.

And a little bit of cumin.

So red lentil soup with potatoes and lemon.

It's our back pocket recipe.

You can change it however you like.

It's super filling, and flavorful, and quick to put together.

You're going to love this one.

♪ ♪ - This classic Turkish dish is called cilbir.

It nestles softly poached eggs into garlic-spiked yogurt, and then it gets topped off with a spice-infused butter, and then a handful of fresh herbs for color and brightness.

It's one of my favorite brunch dishes to make, and we're going to go ahead and get that started.

So the first thing we want to do is grate down some garlic into a medium sized bowl.

And to that garlic, I'll be throwing in a little bit of lemon juice.

Now, by adding lemon juice into grated garlic, we're actually causing a chemical reaction to take place that really helps reduce the aggression that raw garlic can have.

So we're going to set that aside for about ten minutes to let that chemical reaction happen.

So while the garlic and the lemon is doing its thing over there, we could go ahead and get to work on our spiced butter.

So here I have a small skillet set over medium heat, and to that I'll be adding in some butter.

We want to melt that butter down and then we could infuse it with our spices.

Now that my butter is nice and melted, and it's starting to bubble a little bit, we could go ahead and add in our Aleppo pepper.

If you have a hard time finding any Aleppo pepper, you could always use two teaspoons sweet paprika and a little pinch of red pepper flake.

Look at that.

The color comes out almost immediately.

And you'll also smell that kind of sweet fruity nature of the Aleppo pepper.

With the Aleppo in the pan, we could go ahead and remove that from heat altogether.

Now, if you have any fear about poaching eggs, fear not.

This method is straightforward and super, super simple.

We're going to bring our ten-inch skillet here, filled with about an inch of water, up to a very gentle simmer.

And, when I say gentle, I mean it.

You really only want to see it bubbling constantly, but only a couple bubbles break the surface every few seconds or so.

My water has come up to a simmer, and this garlic-lemon has been sitting for ten minutes.

We could go ahead and finish off that yogurt sauce.

So we're going to add in some whole-fat or Greek yogurt.

And we could go ahead and give that a stir.

Along with a little bit of salt.

Okay, all we got to do is put it directly onto our platters here.

Now what I like to do, start with a couple dollops, And from there, using your spoon, go ahead and make some fun little swirls.

That way all the spiced butter and those poached eggs have little nests to sit in.

Now, of course, a little serving for me.

We start with the dollops.

And we give it some fun movement.

Now we can go ahead and get to work on our eggs.

By cracking eggs into little bowls, we're accomplishing two things.

We can check to make sure that there are no shells involved, and it'll make it a lot easier to lower our eggs very gently into our simmering water, as opposed to, again, just dropping it in.

What we'll do is we'll gently pour our egg into the water closer towards the edge of the pan.

Now, as you do this, you may see some wispy whites kind of float away.

It's okay.

Most of the whites will form a nice set envelope around the yolk, making picture perfect poached eggs.

Once all of your eggs are in the pan, go ahead and pop a lid on it, and turn off the heat completely.

We're going to let the residual heat cook these eggs through for about three to five minutes, and that will get us a perfectly jammy yolk.

♪ ♪ All right, our eggs are finished.

So now all we got to do is plate up.

Again, you want to be particularly gentle here, but using a slotted spoon, go ahead and swoop under any of the eggs.

We're going after this bad boy right here.

And once you have it in your spoon, go ahead and give it a couple dabs on a paper-towel-lined plate just to wick off any of that excess moisture.

And it's okay to tip your spoon to either side just to get rid of any extra water before you drop it into that garlic yogurt.

Like so.

This is seriously one of my favorite things to cook for breakfast for myself, for others, mostly for myself.

It's a good time.

So from here we could go ahead and top it off with some of that Aleppo-spiced butter.

And I like to work in quick circles.

Really makes all of the eggs and the yogurt pop just due to the contrast alone.

I'll do the same for my serving.

And, of course, for a nice extra punch of brightness and flavor, we're adding in some fresh herbs.

Here I have some cilantro, some dill, and some mint.

You go ahead and sprinkle it over our dish.

This egg yolk is perfectly jammy.

And it's delicious on its own, but if you have some warm flatbreads, or even crusty breads, it gets so, so much better.

♪ ♪ Mm!

It's tangy from that yogurt sauce.

You only get a little bit of that garlic so it's not overpowering the rest of the meal.

The Aleppo butter is beautifully warm and gives a nice low rumble of heat, and, of course, its color.

And that runny yolk plus the fresh herbs, can't beat it.

You can get this recipe and all of the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

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- Funding for this series was provided by the following.

- That meal.

You sautéed, you seared, and you served, cooking with All-Clad, bonded cookware designed, engineered, and assembled in the U.S.A. for over 50 years.

All-Clad: for all your kitchen adventures.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪