Whole Wheat, Spinach And Tomato Flatbread

Today’s post on whole wheat flatbread is inspired by the ‘green lady’. I see her almost every Saturday at our local food market. She’s often brushing away truant grains of soil dusting the table under bunches of beetroot; their darkly glistening, purple-veined leaves nudging fat cucumbers jostling for space with fire engine-red peppadews, jars of fresh horseradish, chilli oil and trays of speckled quail eggs. A ready smile rounds off her robust Russian accent as she greets us and extols the freshness of her 100 percent organic vegetables and eggs. I love digging through the big boxes beside her table for spinach and Tuscan kale, crisp and shiny with health,  and also for coriander, dill, parsley, rosemary and thyme, herbaceous and passionately aromatic, tied in neat little bunches.  A Rolodex of recipes goes off in my brain and as always, there’s no getting away without buying some. Like invisible, secret spells, these little leaves add lift and nuance to any dish. 

With such freshly-harvested vegetables, it’s always better to do as little to them as possible and maybe even eat the leafy ones the same day. A flatbread, makes a big allowance for creativity. So without sweating too much, a quick whole wheat flatbread topped with barely-cooked spinach, lots of garlic and sweet cherry tomatoes all doused liberally with extra-virgin olive oil, appealed to me as an excellent, vegetarian Saturday lunch for my family. 

This recipe is very forgiving and very versatile. I make it all the time and yet it remains exciting because all I do is use a new topping when the old one gets boring. It also helps use whatever vegetables my fridge has on that day. Although the flatbread is leavened with yeast, it only takes about an hour to rise. So you can even do it when all you have is an hour before mealtime.