Mamma mia! This shareable flatbread pizza is over the top with big, bold Italian flavor. Love pesto? So do we! In fact, we doubled up on the pine nuts, (in the pesto and left whole sprinkled on top for the pine nut lovers!) which gives this flatbread a little crunch in addition to all the other mouth-watering ingredients: juicy turkey sausage, sweet red bell pepper, tangy feta, and rich Kalamata olives. Stop dreaming about pizza and try this recipe right now! At only 8 WW® SmartPoints® per serving, you don’t have to dream, all you have to do is grab some Flatout, find a friend, and turn on the oven.
Tag Archives | feta
Ratatouille Flatbread
Everyone has their own dietary tastes, and sharing house space with another person can sometimes make that a challenge. Not everyone likes and enjoys all foods equally, in other words, and by “all foods,” I mean vegetables. Maybe there’s someone like that in your household, too, and you can relate? A diet rich in fruits and vegetables is an important part of an overall healthy lifestyle. How can we eat more vegetables? One way is ratatouille, the vegetable world’s secret weapon.
Nope, Ratatouille isn’t just a cute movie about a cartoon rodent, it’s a very old dish from southern France, a coarse vegetable stew traditionally made by peasants and farmers. Like all traditional dishes, there are many, many ways to cook it, but most recipes call for cooking the vegetables separately then blending them together later, so that each vegetable tastes unique.
Super fun to say, ratatouille is even more fun to eat. In the summer time, I like to grill slices of zucchini, eggplant, onion, peppers and tomatoes to char them up a bit before chopping them up and combining them into a beautiful vegetable mélange. However, I’ve found that roasting everything at a high temperature does much the same thing. Roasting caramelizes them, concentrating their flavors and making those vegetables richer for it. Even in the early months of spring, you can make this hearty vegetable flatbread; it’s low in calories and big in flavor, and can be made from the comfort of your own kitchen. And it’s so delightful, even sworn meat eaters may enjoy it.
Eggplants and zucchini tend to get slimy if they’re sautéed in the pan, so to avoid this, roasting in the oven is key. And the really nice thing about ratatouille is that it can be eaten hot or cold, so you can make this flatbread pizza and use any leftovers as a dip, omelet filling, or a meal on a bed of couscous later on, once your flatbread is long gone. It’s such a delicious way to eat your veggies. Topped with some salty, crumbly feta cheese is my personal favorite way to enjoy it, but maybe that’s because I’m a complete feta freak.
Make some ratatouille today, slather it on a flatbread, crumble a little feta cheese over it, and watch your non-vegetable lover devour it. It’s that good!
-Amy at Flatout
Crunchy Chopped Salad Wrap with Shrimp
After a few cold, gray months with (or without) snow, the weather really starts to get to me. Everyone around the city is pale like the sky, and when the sun does come out, it almost hurts the eyes. I know I’m not alone; I see people looking up at the brightness, squinting like hibernating bears at that bright foreign object above them. After a couple weeks or more without sun, you’re just not used to it. Thank goodness spring is coming!
If you’re lucky enough to live somewhere chronically sunny, then you have no idea, but the midwest can be tough in the winter. Here in our house, we veg out more, we sleep later, and our diets can reflect all those bad habits too. This winter, however, I’ve tried to combat it. I bought one of those LED sun lamps, so we can use it for about half an hour a day, to get more light. I’m trying to eat better than I normally would. And you know what? That really has helped. Eating fresh food I make at home, where I can control the portions, the salts, the fats, and the sugars is so rewarding in the long run.
So let’s talk about food! This flatbread wrap is one of my winter blues favorites. It’s a chopped salad with shrimp and lots of crispy, crunchy herbs and vegetables.
This makes the perfect work lunch too. This flatbread wrap keeps me awake, sunny, and light on your feet, ready to seize the day. And I can’t think of a better tasting way to do it, either.
-Amy at Flatout
Spring Lamb Burger
If you like hamburgers, then I bet you’ll love lamb burgers! Ground lamb is so flavorful, and spring really is the perfect time to enjoy it, wrapped up in a Foldit flatbread fresh off the grill.
I had a partial jar of artichokes sitting around from a double batch of spinach artichoke dip with flatbread chips, as well as some ground lamb in the freezer from the CSA I belong to, so when dinner was looming, it wasn’t hard to know what to do. Artichokes lend a nice acidity to this flatbread burger recipe, which complements the richness of the burger and feta cheese.
I love buying my meat from a CSA, which is an acronym for Community Supported Agriculture. Farmers get money from individuals early in the growing season, when they’re likely to most need it, and then get shares of the harvest later on throughout the year. In this case, we get a half a lamb in various cuts, from chops to ground meat, that we can use for our meals. Most CSA programs are a win-win for so many reasons!
I’m planting a vegetable garden in a city garden plot this year, and in addition to that, we’re trying to get more meat and dairy from farmers and small, local growers. In the city, this takes a bit of planning, but once you start digging around, it’s pretty amazing to find out who else around you is growing things. Even the university close to us has beehives on the roof of one of their buildings, in an effort to support the bees. Our neighbors across the street have three bee hives as well, and harvest honey on a regular basis, so all we have to do is bring over an empty jar when we run short. If we lived in a more rural area, this might be pretty typical, but in the city we feel super lucky to have local honey.
Anyways, whether or not you are brave enough to buy a whole lamb for all its edible parts, ground lamb is still a delicious buy no matter where you get it. Hopefully you love artichokes (and feta) as much as I do and you’ll make this classic combination this week!
-Amy at Flatout
Baba Ghanoush Salad Wrap
I have a thing for eggplants. First of all, they are delicious. They’re such a beautiful, deep dark purple (or white, or green) and an otherworldly shape. They make a nice, satisfying thunk when you pat them. With their super shiny skin and crazy shapes, I’m always impressed when I see a mature fruit, hanging off its plant.
But despite my efforts, I’ve never been able to successfully grow an eggplant, ever. In fact, they seem impossible to grow. How does something that appears to look so manufactured, more like part vegetable, part new car, actually grow? Evidently they need a ton of sunlight, and pretty consistent warm temperatures, to get a good yield. At this point in my life, and in my gardening career, I prefer to think of them as just magical.
Eggplant slices can be fabulous on the grill, stuffed, or roasted in cubes and then tossed in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic and parsley for an impromptu eggplant salad you can stuff in a flatbread, or pick up with some baked flatbread chips. After we’re finished grilling dinner, I’ll often wrap a couple big boys in foil and throw them in the cooler grill to slow roast, pulling them out before bed so I can make baba ghanoush the next day.
My favorite: smoky, silky purée of eggplant, baba ghanoush, is also easy to make, if you have a little extra time and some big gorgeous eggplants. If your grocery your favorite ready made, then by all means use theirs. This flatbread recipe has a lot going on, and it all works perfectly to make a very satisfying, vegetable packed lunch you’ll return to, again and again.
-Amy at Flatout
