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its components. A Reuben can be made with corned beef or pastrami. I prefer pastrami. To make a Reuben, thinly slice pastrami, enough to make at least three layers on the bread, and heat in a skillet until the fat in the meat starts to soften. The bread must be rye and you should butter the outside—it gives the sandwich a nice crust. Now drain a scoop of homemade sauerkraut and mound it on the unbuttered side of a slice of bread. Top this with a generous quantity of Russian dressing. Top the dressing with the warm meat, and top the meat with a slice of Swiss cheese. Close the sandwich with the other slice of bread, unbuttered side down. You can cook the sandwich in the hot skillet in which you warmed the meat, weighting the sandwich down with a smaller heavier skillet before flipping and cooking on the other side. If you have a panini press, that will also do the job and leave ridges in your bread. The sandwich is done when the crust is toasted and crunchy, and the cheese is melted and oozing out. It’s a big mess and really delicious.

PASTRAMI

Under the entry for “pastrami,” The Oxford Companion to Food quotes a traveler through nineteenth-century Romania who commented on the “thin, black, leather-like pieces of meat dried and browned in the sun, and with salt and squashed flies.”

While there are no squashed flies on the pastrami at Ralph’s, that is about the best that can be said of it. Thinly sliced and flattened into aseptic plastic packets, supermarket pastrami is sweet, flaccid, and watery. Real pastrami is fatty, rich, and peppery, but unless you live near a delicatessen, it’s hard to get your hands on any. Fortunately, though labor-intensive, it’s quite possible to make.

I made my first pastrami using a five-pound brisket and a recipe from Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn’s Charcuterie. We carved away at this immensity of pastrami for weeks, used it in cold sandwiches, and scrambled it with eggs. It tasted fabulous, but there was so much of it and it was very, very lean. I subsequently pastramied some short ribs, another Charcuterie suggestion, and ended up with fist-size chunks of meat that were deliciously fatty, but that shredded rather than sliced, sort of like pulled pork.

Then one day there was a bargain on lamb shoulder so I bought one and pastramied that. Lamb pastrami turns out to be slightly musky, with the perfect ratio of meat to fat. And it is very traditional. In The Book of Jewish Food, Claudia Roden writes that the original old-style Romanian pastrami was made with mutton. This recipe uses Ruhlman’s pastrami technique, with a spice rub inspired by a recipe from Marcus Samuels-son’s Aquavit.

(LAMB) PASTRAMI

Make it or buy it? Make it.

Hassle: Prodigious

Cost comparison: Homemade beef pastrami costs about $4.00 per pound. Supermarket pastrami: $10.00 to $15.00 per pound.

BRINE

1½ cups kosher salt

1 cup granulated sugar

8 teaspoons pink salt (see Appendix)

1 tablespoon pickling spice

½ cup dark brown sugar, packed

¼ cup honey

1 tablespoon garlic powder

One boneless 4- to 5-pound lamb shoulder, or beef brisket, short ribs, or chuck roast

3 tablespoons black peppercorns

1 tablespoon coriander seeds

¼ cup mild paprika

2 tablespoons Chinese five-spice powder

1. Combine all the brine ingredients with 1 gallon water in a pot large enough to later hold the lamb. Bring the brine to a simmer, stirring until the salt and sugars dissolve. Remove from the heat, allow to cool to room temperature, and refrigerate until well chilled.

2. Put the meat in the brine and place a plate on top of the meat to keep it completely submerged. Refrigerate for 3 days.

3. Remove the meat from the brine, rinse well, and pat dry.

4. In a dry skillet, toast the peppercorns and coriander seeds until fragrant but not burned. Cool and grind in a spice grinder. Combine with the paprika and five-spice powder. Coat the meat.

5. Smoke to an internal temperature of 150 degrees F. (See sidebar on smoking.)

6. Preheat the oven to 275 degrees