Flatbread with Lamb Sausage and Za’atar

“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” Percy Bysshe Shelley once wrote. While I tend to agree with him, especially because I am the one who shovels the snow, my thoughts take me in another direction come spring: I think that spring lamb cannot be far behind. This is because I am always, always thinking about food. An under utilized meat, I know, but I can’t help it: lamb is my favorite red meat of all. My brothers tend to prefer ham to lamb for our family dinners, though, so I make sure we have a great leg of lamb dinner a couple times a year without them. Sorry, bros. Plus lamb has healthy fats, loads of b vitamins, and is ridiculously high in iron.

Of course, lamb lends itself very well to Mediterranean cuisine, and that’s where Flatout flatbreads come in. I substitute flatbread out for pita anywhere I can. Even as a snack, if I’m in a hurry, I will heat a flatbread up and tear it into pieces to dip in a combination of olive oil and za’atar, my current favorite spice blend that includes sumac, sesame seeds, thyme, oregano, and marjoram. I simply make a slurry of the spices and oil, and dip. Perfection.

That little mixture acts as the sauce in this flatbread recipe. I just brush it on before everything else, and it packs a big herbal flavor which you will return to again and again, I promise. As far as lamb sausage, I prefer the little spicy merguez links that can be broken up after they’re cooked and scattered on the warm flatbread. If you cannot find merguez, any lamb sausage will work, in a pinch.

Some shredded mozzarella cheese holds everything together on the flatbread and takes the edge off the spicy sausage, too. You just might find that the non-lamb people in your life fall for this delicious flatbread when you take it out of the oven; it’s so rich and aromatic, they’ll just have to have a bite. In which case you can blame it on spring fever.

Amy at Flatout