Lahmacun
Lahmacun, lahmajun or lahmajo is a Middle Eastern flatbread topped with minced meat, minced vegetables, and herbs such as onions, garlic, tomatoes, red peppers, and parsley, flavored with spices such as chili pepper and paprika, then baked. Lahmacun is often wrapped around vegetables, including pickles, tomatoes, peppers, onions, lettuce, parsley, and roasted eggplant.
Originating in the Levant region of West Asia, where it is traditionally known by its Arabic name lahm bi ʿajīn. Lahm bi ajeen or lahmacun is a popular dish in Lebanon and Syria.
Variants of lahmacun are also common in Armenia and Turkey., where the dish became popular in local cuisines. In English, it is sometimes referred to as "Lebanese pizza", "Armenian pizza", or "Turkish pizza", because of its round shape and superficial similarity to pizza, though it traditionally contains neither cheese nor tomato sauce and is made with a thinner crust.
Etymology and terminology
The name entered English from Turkish lahmacun, pronounced lahmajun, and from Armenian , both derived from Arabic لحم عجين, meaning "dough meat".History
Flatbreads in the Middle East have been cooked in tandoors and on metal frying pans such as the tava for thousands of years. They have been used to wrap meat and other foods for convenience and portability. However, until the wider adoption in medieval times of the large stone ovens, flatbreads stuffed or topped with meat and other foods were not baked together, cooking the bread and the topping at the same time.A 13th-century Syrian cookbook compiled in Aleppo, Kitāb al-Wusla ilā al-Ḥabīb, contains a recipe describing minced meat spread on thin dough and baked in a brick oven. It instructs to “cut up meat small, then spread it on a round piece of dough and bake it in the oven.” This recipe is identified by scholars as the earliest textual reference to laḥm bi ʿajīn.
A variety of such dishes exist such as sfiha and manakish, became popular in Levant, such as Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and Syria. A thin flatbread, topped with spiced ground meat, became known as lahm b'ajin, shortened to lahmajin and similar names.
An 1844 French–Arabic dictionary of Syrian and Egyptian Arabic by the Swedish orientalist defines lahm el-ʿajin as small baked pastries filled with minced meat, and mixed with sour milk or pomegranate juice before being cooked in an oven. 2 recipes for lahma bi-ajin can be found in the 1885 cookbook titled Ustadh al-Tabbakhin by Lebanese writer, along with a recipe for meat-filled fatayer.
According to Ayfer Bartu, lahmacun was not known in Istanbul until the mid-20th century. Bartu says that before the dish became widespread in Turkey after the 1950s, it was found in Arab countries and the southern regions of Turkey, around Urfa and Gaziantep.
By region
In Assyrian tradition, lahmacun is served to those who are grieving the loss of a loved one, alongside Turkish coffee and other dishes.In The Netherlands lahmacun is often sold as a street food or snack, often under the name Turkish pizza. The lahmacun is rolled up and filled with salad, sambal and garlic sauce, often with added döner meat and/or cheese.
Variations
- Antep, includes garlic
- Urfa, includes onion
- Aleppo, includes garlic, onion, and pomegranate molasses
Controversy