A couple weeks ago, I got into my head that I wanted to have a Reuben sandwich, and that necessarily meant I’d have to make it at home: There’s no place I know of where it’s made on demand. However, the first place I ever had one was actually here in New Zealand, at a long-gone American deli/cafe/food shop that used to be on Auckland’s North Shore. Nigel and I went there his mum many years ago (probably more than 20…), and we all had Reubens for lunch (after which I bought some imported American food items for the first time ever).
The shop closed not all that long later as the village-like shopping area was torn down for re-development. The owner of the shop sold American products online for awhile, but he embarrassed me because, mad at the former North Shore City Council over the redevelopment, he referred to it as “North Short shitty council”; the crass, boorish American behaviour made me cringe, because it was precisely the sort of stereotypical “American abroad” (my mother would’ve called it “ugly American”) behaviour I was trying live down (I should add that later a new, much larger—and better—importer of US/Canadian/Mexican food products opened, and I’ve written several blog posts about going there; the original place was gone long before I began this blog).
With no place to go get Reubens, Nigel and I decided to make them at home, and at first it worked really well—they tasted nearly as good as the ones we’d ordered. The “near” part is because we were using products we could buy in our local supermarket, not products from the USA, and it wasn’t always a good match.
The first issue is that in New Zealand (and other Commonwealth countries) the corned been we have is called silverside (also called corned silverside). Wikipedia explains well:
Silverside is a cut of beef from the hindquarter of cattle, just above the leg cut. Called "silverside" in the UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, it gets the name because of the "silverwall" on the side of the cut, a long fibrous "skin" of connective tissue (epimysium) which has to be removed as it is too tough to eat. The primary muscle is the biceps femoris.What Americans think of as corned beef is a completely different cut, usually brisket, which is cut from the chest or lower breast of cattle. The two versions are very similar, but since I grew up with American corned beef, I can tell there’s a difference.
Nevertheless, it’s close enough to use, and to be sure it was good enough, I bought some sliced silverside from the deli counter at the supermarket, rather than the manufactured and prepackaged sort sold for sandwiches. This wasn’t why the Reuben I made was a disappointment.
Similarly, the Swiss cheese wasn’t a disappointment: While very expensive, it was nice and tasted “right” to me. In the past, Nigel and I had to buy Gruyère cheese, which was less, um, altered than the typical American version. In the many years since, what I think of as “Swiss cheese” has become far easier to get.
The problem also wasn’t the sauerkraut: I bought the tinned version made by an Australian company, and it tasted pretty much like what my parents used when I was a kid. The thing is, though, that when Nigel and I used to make Reubens, the sauerkraut was always acceptable, even if some were nicer than others.
The first thing to be amiss was the bread: The day I was at the supermarket, the only rye bread they stocked was what the manufacturer called “Roggenbrot Dark Rye”, and because Rye is grown in New Zealand, and the bread was made here, the bread was at least possibly in the same country as rye, though I suspect none happened to be in the factory at the time: It just tasted like a slightly denser mass-manufactured wheat bread, though darker in colour. It had no rye taste whatsoever, as far as I could tell, but as a mixed grain bread, it wasn’t bad for mass market bread (I don’t usually buy that brand because, for my taste, they’re all too insubstantial).
The next problem could well have been the “Russian dressing”: The recipe I found may have been too inauthentic, or I maybe I just made it wrong (I’d never made it before). Whatever the case, it added very little to the sandwich (though I liked it).
A final possibility is that I assembled it all wrong: I’m pretty sure NIgel used to make them, or, if I did, I can’t remember the last time I did—meaning, I have no idea what I used to do. Whatever, I don’t think we’d made theme for maybe a decade or so.
This was a huge disappointment because I’d been craving that Reuben. The fact it was a disappointment, though, made me glad I’d only made one. But, what to do with the rest of the stuff I didn’t use?
The cheese and silverside were easy: Sandwiches. I wasn’t sure to do with the unused sauerkraut I put in the fridge.
When I was a kid, my mother sometimes made what she called “sauerkraut and pork”, the two being boiled together and served—I think?—with mashed potato. It’s so long ago that I can’t remember precisely, but I do remember I wasn’t a fan of the pork because there were small bones mixed in (I have no idea what cut it was), and I hate bones in food.
I decided to make something that was kind of an homage to what my mother used to make, but more appropriate to the times (fresh pork is expensive these days) and to what I had on hand. So, I took out three pork sausages I had in the freezer, boiled them and then browned them in a pan. I also boiled actual potatoes and mashed them, and heated the sauerkraut (the meal is in the photo below). It was actually very nice, even if the sausages were heavily flavoured with spices/herbs. In fact, it was better than my Reuben was.
And that’s how I took what had been a disappointment and turned it into something much nicer, without wasting anything. In the end, I was happy with the final result, if not the first one. It’s still no big deal, though: Just a better one.
