I currently have way too much salad rocket, or arugula, growing in my garden. I have been eating some daily in some form for over a month now. Today, I was in the mood for some crispy toasted ciabatta with rocket leaves and lemon pork. I topped it off with some quick pickled peppers. This is simplicity. It is flavour explosions with each bite.

So please follow along with me as I show you how I make this very simple dish, honouring the ingredients, and creating something fresh and healthy.

Ingredients

For this tartine, I used the following ingredients to make about 6 small open-faced sandwiches:

- 1 lemon and its juice and rind/zest - 3 small sweet peppers - 200g of pork rib-eye - 2 cups of rocket/arugula - 6 slices of ciabatta - 2 tsp of butter - 2 tsp of olive oil - 2 tsp sugar - 2 tbs vinegar

Method/Process

Making open-faced sandwiches is really simple and requires only some motivation. You can obviously make this sandwich as you would like, but this is how I made it.

I started by cooking the meat. We can buy pork rib-eye and it is deliciously tender. Cooked in a skillet with just lemon and salt, it goes beyond words how delicious it is. I cooked it until there was enough Maillard reaction taking place, ensuring the most flavourful pieces of pork! I was really sad that I only cooked so few pieces, as I kept on eating small pieces that broke off.

When the pork was cooked, I cut it into smallish pieces, perfect for the sandwich.

Beware, these little pieces are addictive! Make some extra, you will snack on these while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Whilst the pork was cooling down, I picked some rocket from the garden. As you can see, the garden is overflowing:

Before doing anything else, I pickled the peppers. This is such a simple process. I began by cutting the peppers into small pieces. I added everything to a jar, combining the following:

• half a lemon's juice,
• 2-3 tbs of vinegar,
• 2 tsp of sugar, and
• salt to taste.

The peppers need to sit at room temp for about 10 minutes or so to "pickle".

As this sits, and the pork cools down, I toasted the ciabatta. There was ample fat in the pan, but I added some extra butter. Sourdough toasted in butter is the best thing you will ever eat. I also added the lemon zest to the finished toast. This extra zest of lemon flavour is worth it!

(As you can see, a piece went missing! I could not resist the temptation to eat a piece.)

As soon as I toasted the bread, I began assembling the tartine. It is really simple: place the meat on the bottom of the tartine, or place the meat on the bread. Add the salad leaves, and then the pickled peppers. Add some of the sweet lemony vinegar pickling juice. This will break through the fatty meat. And there you have it! It is that simple.

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It does not look like the Instagram post that makes you weep from food joy, but it sure did taste that way! The older rocket leaves are quite big, almost 20 cm or so big. They are not the perfect Instagramable micro-greens, but they are sure tastier!

The pickles add to this. Nothing else could have made this tartine better, it was perfect in its simplicity.

The fatty but soft pork adds to the amazing taste. It only took me about 10 minutes to cook the pork; it was fork tender.

The tartine took me less than 30 minutes to make. It sure is a quick lunch that gives a punch in terms of flavour.

I made about six smallish tartines, but if I used bigger slices of bread I would have only made two or three.

I also already imagine the other flavour combinations; peanut soy pork with rocket leaves; avo and mayo with pork and smoked paprika; there are so many options!

I really hope that you give this tartine or open-faced sandwich a try! Or even only if I inspired you to try something new.

Please let me know in the comments if you have any other ideas!

Happy cooking, and keep well.

All of the photographs used in this post are my own, taken with my iPhone. The musings and writings, but also the recipe, are my own creations.