Curried Crab Salad with Coriander-Dusted Flatbread

This creative sandwich uses refrigerated pizza dough as "flatbread," but alas, I know of no company that makes a vegan refrigerated pizza dough. (Note: this is a point of contention I have with PETA's website, which lists Pillsbury's pizza crust as vegan.  It contains sugar, and since I avoid bone-char refined sugar, this item does not make my list of vegan foods).

Luckily, pizza dough is easy to make at home, as long as you don't mind taking the time for a couple of rises, so use any recipe you know or like.  My favorite pizza dough recipe, from Cooking Light, makes a 14-ounce crust; I trimmed off the extra 4 ounces and slipped it into my freezer for the next time I want a mini pizza for dinner.  The remaining 10-ounces got put to work for this sandwich.  For the rest of the recipe, read on.

Ingredients:

• 1 (10-ounce) pizza dough
• Cooking spray
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seeds
• 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 cup vegan sour cream
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
• 1/8 teaspoon ground red pepper
• 8 ounces Match crab, thawed
• 4 romaine lettuce leaves

1. Place your pizza dough on a baking sheet coated with cooking spray, and pat into a 12x9-inch rectangle.  Lightly coat the dough with cooking spray and sprinkle with the salt, coriander, and black pepper.  Bake at 425 degrees for 13 minutes - it should be lightly browned by the end.  Remove from the pan and cool on a wire rack, then cut the bread into 4 quarters.  Cut each quarter in half lengthwise, so you have 8 pieces of flatbread total.

2. Combine the sour cream, cilantro, curry powder, and ground red pepper in a bowl.  Crumble the Match crab into a skillet coated with cooking spray and cook until thoroughly heated over medium heat - about 3 minutes.  Add the crab to the sour cream mixture, stirring gently.  Place 1 lettuce leaf on each of 4 bread pieces.  Divide the crab mixture evenly over the lettuce leaves, then top with the remaining pieces of bread.

Since you'll probably have to buy a whole package or head of romaine, toss the rest with bottled dressing for a simple side salad to round out the meal.  I also recommend a glass of crisp, chilled (vegan) white wine.

Nutrition Info:
4 servings (1 sandwich), Calories 304 

Tasting Notes:

There was BIG flavor to this dish - strong crab, strong curry, and deliciously flavorful salt and spice on the flatbread.  It all combined perfectly, and for that reason I don't recommend serving the filling on wimpy old sandwich bread - it needs the strongly flavored flatbread to compliment it.  The only reason this recipe doesn't get a 5 in my book is a personal preference when it comes to the Match crab.  It's not that the company has done anything wrong - quite the opposite.  Their crab tastes so real that my vegan tastebuds start reeling after one bite, as I remind myself that I'm not actually eating crab, but this sandwich was still delectable.  If you don't want to buy Match crab, you could try finely diced tofu in the sour cream mixture, in which case it will probably be like curried egg salad.

Rating:
4