Gurdeep Loyal’s quick and easy recipe for Turkish lamb and hot pepper paccheri | Quick and easy

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Turkish lamb and hot pepper paccheri in a pan with a wooden spoon, and served on three plates next to the pan, all placed on a green cloth with napkins and glasses of water.
Gurdeep Loyal’s Turkish lamb and hot pepper paccheri. Photograph: Louise Hagger/The Guardian. Food styling: Emily Kydd. Prop styling: Jennifer Kay. Food styling assistant: Eden Owen-Jones.

A spicy Turkish dish with big flavours and big pasta, all topped with garlicky yoghurt sauce

Biber salçası is a Turkish paste made from concentrated cooked red peppers and salt. It comes in two varieties: acı (spicy) and tatlı (sweet). The hotter version adds a deep, umami heat to cumin-spiced lamb in this pasta recipe, which in Turkey is known as markana. Traditionally, markana is served with garlicky yoghurt and a generous drizzle of chilli butter enlivened with pul biber and sumac. With flavours this loud, it’s best to use a large pasta shape such as paccheri, because its cavernous middles can hold satisfying morsels of the filling.

Turkish lamb and hot pepper paccheri

Prep 10 min
Cook 25 min
Serves 4

1 tbsp olive oil
1 large red onion, peeled and diced
Fine salt
500g lamb mince
2 tsp cumin seeds, crushed
6 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
4 tbsp acı biber salçası (hot Turkish pepper paste)
3 tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp dried mint
Sugar
400g paccheri
200g natural yoghurt
Finely grated zest and juice of 1 large unwaxed lemon
50g unsalted butter
1 tsp pul biber or chilli flakes
1 tsp sumac
15g fresh dill, leaves finely chopped

Pour the olive oil into a wide, deep frying pan, then add the onion and a quarter-teaspoon of salt, and saute for four minutes. Add the lamb mince, cumin and four of the crushed garlic cloves, and cook for six to seven minutes, until the meat is just beginning to brown.

Add the hot pepper paste, tomato puree, dried mint, a teaspoon of fine salt and a generous pinch of sugar, and cook for two minutes. Pour in 250ml water, turn down the heat to medium-low and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook the pasta in salted boiling water according to the packet instructions, then drain.

In a small bowl, mix the yoghurt with the remaining two crushed garlic cloves and the lemon zest.

Melt the butter in a small frying pan and cook for three to four minutes, until it just begins to tint brown. Stir in the pul biber and sumac, then take off the heat.

Stir most of the lemon juice and most of the dill into the lamb sauce, then add the drained pasta and mix well to coat. Swirl over the garlic yoghurt, followed by the sumac butter, garnish with more dill and another squeeze of lemon, and serve straight from the pan.