Harissa Lamb and Green Olive Tartine

I suggest smothering this open-faced sandwich in cilantro leaves, but for the sake of the photo I held back.

Cooking with meat is delicious, but it’s also a treat—so make it last

This isn’t so much as a recipe as it is a guide on how to work with your leftovers.

I recently wrote about citrusy lamb leg that does, literally, fall off the bone and looks more like confit. It lasts in the refrigerator for days because it’s basically pickled in its own fat. Reheating it and eating it exactly the same way isn’t particularly tempting, so let’s do better.

I thought of a tartine: a fancy French way of saying an open sandwich. Why are we doing this? Because a crusty bread, like a baguette, absorbs all of that fat beautifully. As it reheats, the lamb becomes even softer and should be paired with a carb to suck it all up. (On that note, you could also top up some pasta with the lamb if for some wild reason you don’t like sandwiches or you really have a lot of leftovers.)

I also wanted to revive my lamb leftovers with harissa, a hot chili paste omnipresent in Marseille and throughout the Mediterranean. In cooking, I generally like pairing opposites and the mix of hot spice, garlic and acid breathes life into the refrigerated lamb. These days, you can find harissa anywhere. It doesn’t need to be fancy or craft, either: I can’t say what brand I have in the pantry because this isn’t that kind of blog, but it comes in a tube like tomato paste and it’s sold everywhere in France.

For this open-faced sandwich, I reheated the lamb—with all of its fat—in an iron skillet on medium-high heat. I added two heaping teaspoons of a spicy harissa, but keep in mind that I have a high spice tolerance. If you don’t like spice as much, go for one teaspoon. Let the fat melt and cook down with the lamb, and then add a small handful of green olives, sliced. Continue cooking and just before it’s ready, add a squeeze of fresh lemon juice.

Spoon on top of your slice of baguette or crusty bread. If the bread isn’t crusty enough, I recommend browning it quickly in the toaster. Dress the tartine generously with coriander leaves.

We may not have the summer sun, but for now we have red, spicy-hot meat to tide us over.