Middle Eastern Pizza (p. 180)

Better start writing down your grocery list, because you want to make this pizza. For realz. Unless you're a vegetarian, in which case you should still make it but buy some weird soy product instead of meat.

The dough is made like normal pizza dough, except that it has olive oil and plain yogurt in it. I liked the directions for making the dough because they told me to knead until it was "as soft as your earlobe." I willingly obliged. I've got pretty soft earlobes, so this took a while.

While the dough is rising (leave it alone for at least two hours), you can make the pizza topic. Sauté pine nuts in olive oil until they are golden brown.

I always always burn mine a little, but they still taste delicious.   Also sauté onions for the topping, but then you're done with using the oven top -- everything else goes in raw.

Place the pine nuts and onions in a bowl and add in chopped tomatoes, green pepper and parsley, ground beef or lamb, allspice, cumin, pepper, tomato concentrate, and fresh lemon juice (or something else that will add a little tartness to the topping). Stir everything together into a thick paste.

Roll the dough out, making the pizza crusts very thin.

Add the topping to the pizza spreading it out to almost reach the edges -- these pizzas won't have much of a crust.

Bake for 10 to 15 minutes  and then serve.

This was really good, and then we added the recommended garnish -- strained yogurt -- and it was incredible. Make this pizza, and absolutely use the garnish.

ground beef --  $1.10

onion -- $.71

yogurt -- $1.89

tomatoes -- $2.49

Total Cost of Middle Eastern Pizza: $6.19