Weihnachtsmarkt Esslingen Hackfleischpizza

Heading toward the Esslingen Weihnachtsmarkt

Last weekend we visited the world famous Esslingen medieval Christmas market. There we had some lamb pizza which was so good that we decided we needed to try and make it at home. After a bit of searching, we found that the lamb pizza served in Esslingen is a lot like Swiha, a meat pizza from Lebanon. We have been cooking many different dishes for upcoming Christmas dinner so we decided to add these to our list.

We made one traditional type (with ground beef instead of lamb though) and at the same time we used the dough to make mini veggie pizzas with a white garlic sauce.

For both of these recipes you need to make pizza dough. You can find our recipe in our Cheap and Easy Homemade Pizza entry

For the Esslingen mini pizzas:

300 g ground lamb or ground beef
1 Tbs cumin (if you are not much of a fan of cumin we advise only half this amount)
300 ml hot water
2 tomatoes, diced
1/2 tube of tomato paste
1 large onion,sliced in rings
chili powder, parsley, salt, pepper

Preheat oven to 250 C (475 F). It is important for the pizza that the oven (and baking sheet) is extremely hot before cooking anything. This makes the pizza crispy!




Heat a saucepan on high. Add the cumin and for a short amount of time let brown. Add the onions and ground lamb (or beef). Cook thoroughly. Add a tiny bit of water and mix well. Add the tomato paste to the pan (away from the other ingredients) and roast for about one minute. Then mix with the rest of the ingredients.



Add the 300 ml of hot water and let simmer until reduced. After there is little liquid left add the diced tomatoes and seasonings. Continue to cook until hot through.



While this is cooking, roll out the pizza dough and cut into small circles. A original "Maßkrug" is best!




 Top with the meat mixture and cook for 15 minutes.

For the vegetable and garlic mini pizzas:

Garlic Sauce:
1 Tbs butter
1 1/2 Tbs flour
1/2 cup milk
2 cloves garlic
1 Tbs Italian seasoning mix
1/4 cup shredded parmesan cheese
salt, pepper

Topping:
Bell pepper
Mushrooms
Onion
Tomato
Anything else you think sounds good!

 Melt the butter on the stove over medium. Add the flour and whisk together. Slowly add the milk, continue to whisk. Let the mixture get thick but do not let it burn! Add the seasonings and garlic.

Make this right when you are ready to use it. It gets cold and thick quickly making it very hard to spread!


Spread on the rolled and cut pizza dough, add slices of onion, mushroom, bell pepper, or tomatoes.


Cook on 250 C (475 F) for about 15 minutes. It is important that the oven is really that hot before you put them in and that the baking sheet is heated up in the oven. This makes sure that the bottom of the pizza is crisp and not soggy!