Today’s lunch is inspired by Turkish cuisine, one of my personal favourites. I fell in love with it in London where I lived just a stone’s throw from a thriving Turkish district. This is where I first saw gözleme making in action. In winter, several restaurants would have their staff make fresh gözleme in the shop windows in a bid to entice hungry customers inside. They were so slick when working with huge sheets of dough that sometimes I would just stand there and watch them work while waiting for a bus outside. It was a great show of skills.
The best gözleme I had was in Kadıköy market in Istanbul. We knew we were onto something special as the queue was miles long, but the ladies who ran the stall had such a slick operation going and they were such a pleasure to watch that the wait was not a problem at all. And it was so worth it too. We opted for a classic spinach filled gözleme and it was simply divine. It instantly made us feel warm despite walking for hours in the cold. Today’s gözleme doesn’t have a traditional filling. I came up with it myself, inspired by Polish cuisine where beetroots and horseradish are common winter staples and together they are a pretty good match. Traditional gözleme tends to be much larger in size, but constrained by the size of my pan, I went for small handy parcels that you can simply put into your lunchbox instead of a boring sandwich.
2 cups of flour, sifted 6 g dried instant yeast ½ tsp salt ½ tsp sugar 200 ml lukewarm water 1 tbsp / 15 ml olive oil + extra for brushing
FILLING
800 g beetroot* 5 garlic cloves, 4 finely diced and 1 pressed 3 spring onions or shallots handful of fresh parsley, chopped finely 1 lemon, juice of ½ + a few wedges to serve handful of chopped walnuts ¾ cup raw cashews, soaked overnight 1½ tsp cumin about ½ cup / 120 ml grated horseradish (from a jar) salt, to taste pepper, to taste
ASSEMBLY
