Monasteries, temples, baths and castles lay on their backs, watching the night sky and reflecting on their former glory.
Heirs of once proud noble families, the stories they tell smell of another age. They recount the joys and pains of their hosts of yesterday, the melodies they played, the poems they sang ; and if you ask them kindly they will even treat you with one or two recipes of their starlit feists.
Here is one heard by a merry group of talented archeologists who, after having spent the day listening to the tales of the stones, gathered by the fireside and merrily spent the night baking and eating this delicious pizza.
Ingredients :
- Flour
- Tomato paste
- Spices : cumin, hot chili pepper powder, black pepper, dried mint, cloves
- Sugar
- Lemon juice
- Onion
- Walnuts
- Fresh mint
- Feta cheese and/or yogurt
- First make the dough : put some flour into a large bowl, and add some cold water and salt. Mix with one hand (you need to keep one clean to grab objects, otherwise you will cover everything you touch with wet flour). Follow this simple algorithm : when slimy things stick to your hand, add more flour ; when the dough is too dry to mix, add more water. When you've reached a nice compromise, let the dough rest in a bowl and cover with a wet cloth for 20 minutes. You can now prepare the sauce.
- Cut an onion in small pieces, and fry in a pan with some oil, mixing now and then. Add all the spices and mix.
- When the onion is soft and sweet (yellow but not yet brown), add the tomato paste, the salt and the sugar. Add some water to let the tomato paste mix with the other ingredients and mix well. Let the sauce cook for some time until the water has evaporated.
- Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees celcius (or brownie temperature for our american friends).
- Take the dough and re-mix it in your hands with a lot of force for it to become as homogenous as possible.
- Shape little spheres with your hands, and spread them thinly with a cylinder over a board. They will form the base of your pizzas. Don't try to make them round ; it's much more fun if you make them into very elongated ellipses, so that you can make little boats out of them.
- Spread thinly the sauce on each of the future pizzas, leaving a little space at the edge along the whole perimeter. Fold vertically the edges to prevent the sauce from leaking, shaping a little boat out of the pizza. You can be creative with the front and the back, giving a nice drakkar look for instance.
- On each pizza, sprinkle whole fresh mint leaves, walnuts (without the shell and cut into little pieces, but we thought you could figure that on your own), and some lemon juice.
- Put into the oven and cook until the crust is fully cooked.
- Serve sprinkled with bits of feta cheese or dipped into salty yogurt, and light some candles.
