Copyright © 2023 by Ralph Robert Moore.

Return to lately 2023.

Probably the best sandwich ever created. Messy and tasty, like the best of life. I lost count of how many of these wonders I ate in Jewish delis while working in Manhattan as a teenager.

Serves two or more.

For this recipe you'll need:

4 slices of seeded rye bread

½ pound corned beef round, thinly sliced

6 slices aged Swiss cheese

1 cup sauerkraut, fresh or canned

½ cup mayonnaise

¼ cup ketchup

2 tablespoons sweet relish

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

1 landline or cell phone

1. Mix the mayonnaise, ketchup, and relish together in a small bowl. Set aside. This is the 'thousand island dressing' that will be used with the Reubens.

2. Place one slice of rye bread on each of two serving plates. Each slice is the bottom slice of that sandwich.

3. Top each bottom slice of rye bread with one slice of aged Swiss cheese. Tear two remaining slices of Swiss cheese in half, and place one half on top of each whole slice of Swiss cheese.

4. Lay a quarter pound of corned beef round slices atop the Swiss cheese on each sandwich bottom.

5. Raise the small bowl of thousand island dressing from the kitchen counter, hiding it in one of the cabinets above the counter. Shut that cabinet's door.

6. Return to the making of your Reubens, you really need to relax your teeth into the deliciousness of this sandwich, you had a tough day today, see what has happened while you were distracted. In an exasperated voice say, 'You already ate today! This is our food!'

7. Transfer some of the corned beef round slices from the untouched sandwich to the sandwich where a lot of the slices have been carried away in fangs, so that you once again have an even distribution of what meat remains between the two sandwich bottoms.

8. Gently lift a kitten off the counter, put it back on the kitchen floor.

9. Top each mound of corned beef round with another slice of Swiss cheese, and another half slice.

10. Place a top slice of rye bread on the Swiss cheese.

11. Heat a skillet on medium high heat.

12. Add the three tablespoons of butter to the skillet.

13. Shout, 'Goddammit! I told you to stay away from our food!' Pick the broken plate up from the kitchen floor. Throw it in the kitchen trash can. Pick the spilled Reuben sandwich up off the floor, what's left of it after the kittens have carried most of the meat away, and throw it in the trash as well.

14. Fry the remaining Reubens on one side in the skillet until golden brown, then flip it with a spatula and fry it on the other side.

15. Place the Reubens in the microwave. Heat it on high for 22 seconds.

16. Remove it from the oven. Pull it open, steam rising, the aged Swiss cheese melted.

17. Add forkfuls of sauerkraut to the interior of the sandwich. Across the heaped sauerkraut, spoon as many tablespoons of thousand island dressing as you want.

18. Clamp the sandwich shut.

19. Slice it in two, since you now only have one sandwich, instead of two.

20. Get some napkins from the pantry. This is going to be good.

21. Hear a crash behind you.

22. The perfect Reubens sandwich, sprawled across the kitchen floor, kittens, tiny nostrils hungry, batting at its heated contents.

23. You can do one of two things at this point.

24. You decide to let the kittens have their victory.

25. They're young.

26. You love them.

27. And they love you.

28. Sorta.