Cooking something without really knowing what it is you're cooking

I have been reading The Next Nigella's blog and she mentioned making Nigella's Lahmacuns from How to be a Domestic Goddess and loving them. I was intrigued by her description, and thought that I'd have to try them, even though How to be a Domestic Goddess is the only Nigella book I don't own (Nigella Express isn't out yet, so it doesn't count!). There is a surprising lack of recipes for Lahmacuns on the internet. I found this one and off I went. I mixed the dough in the breadmaker on the dough setting, but boy was it runny. I added heaps of extra flour and it was still so sticky when I turned it out. It made such a mess!

I managed to get it into a workable dough though, but then my unfailing ability to screw up any Imperial measure chimed in and somehow I took 1/8 inch to be much thicker than it actually is. See, I'd never actually seen a picture of what Lahmacuns are meant to look like beyond The Next Nigella's blog picture, which I never looked at full size. So mine are much much thicker than they are supposed to be:

How it is supposed to look (image courtesy of Wikipedia)

Here are mine.

They were very tasty, but way way too filling with all the doughy base. I'd love to find Nigella's recipe for them - How to be a Domestic Goddess seems to have vanished from all the local bookshops - but without that to inspire me not even the nice taste could push me to make it again. For now anyway. Even though the failure was totally my fault for not paying attention to the recipe.