“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

I came up with this sophisticated little number when I bought a few white anchovies for a Caesar salad I was making for a dinner party, and had some of these precious little fish left over from a trip to the Italian market in my neighborhood. They’re much less pungent than canned or salt cured anchovies, and they’re sustainable fish, too. What I like is that they taste milder than their salty cured brothers, so if you need to use those for this recipe, be sure to give them a good rinse beforehand. Otherwise, use quality small sardines for this flatbread.

If you’ve tended to shy away from anchovies before, just promise me you will try just one of these little fish somewhere in your life. And if you’re already one of the converted, then try this simple flatbread! The garlicky ricotta spread makes a nice foil for the oily little fish and fresh spring asparagus, but the star of the show is the lemon zest, added once you pull it out of the oven.

Since it’s almost spring, you’ll be able to find tender shoots of early asparagus st the store. Years ago when I was in college, there was a neighboring farm town that grew asparagus. College kids would work there, picking asparagus by riding on the back of a tractor with an attached wagon, sitting facing backwards, with their legs hanging off the back of the wagon. The asparagus would appear under the wagon as it moved down the rows, and snap! They’d reach between their dangling feet and break off the new asparagus, still warm from the sun, and toss it into the wagon behind them. If you can find asparagus this fresh, then definitely make this flatbread!

You’ll have a quick and elegant dinner or snack that is perfectly paired with a bottle of inexpensive prosecco or sparkling wine. Oh, did I just say bottle? I meant glass.