I Think I Invented a New Sandwich

Introducing The Ruth

Today marks a special occasion because I likely lured a few of you in with the promise of writing about melts, but I don’t think I’ve written about any yet. That ends today with the introduction of what I think is a new addition to the canon of sandwiches with melted cheese that I am calling The Ruth as a tribute to my wife’s late grandmother whose own genius is at the heart of this sandwich. But first I need to do that annoying thing where I talk before I get to the food. If you don’t like it, that’s tough.

Jews have a thing for sweet and sour. I don’t know if there’s an official reason for it. I could wager a guess and say our love of Chinese food maybe has something to do with it. I certainly don’t think it’s something from the old country. I have definitely had Sephardic food that I’d classify as sweet and also sour, but maybe not balanced enough to call it sweet and sour. I looked at a few older Jewish cookbooks I have, and, as an example, Jennie Grossinger doesn’t have anything for sweet and sour meat in her 1958 book The Art of Jewish Cooking. I’m sure there are some valid historical reasons Jews like the two flavors together, be it on Passover brisket or Christmas Day Chinese food, something that I’d wager really kicked up in the middle of the 20th century, but that’s not what I’m here to examine. All I’m here to do today is tell you about this sandwich.

My wife Emily is my favorite person and, maybe no surprise, she’s also my favorite cook. If I had to describe it, I’d say she has a predatory nature when it comes to ingredients. She eyes what she wants, then grabs it and I’m not lying when I tell you that in 13 years together I’ve never had a bad meal from her. A lucky man I am, but I’m also a bit of a brat. I’m greedy because I know she can make so many good things, but when she asks what I want, I will almost always answer “sweet and sour meatballs.”

The first rule of sweet and sour meatballs is they aren’t meatballs. It’s really just meat. We normally use ground turkey, but this last time we used D'Artagnan ground Wagyu because it feels nice to be fancy sometimes. The second rule and this is more Emily’s thing, is that there’s really no recipe to speak of. Basically, the best way to describe cooking in our house is standards and free jazz. I’ll do the Cole Porter and Irving Berlin stuff, meaning I use recipes. I almost always use them. Emily is Ornette Coleman in the kitchen. I swear on my life, if you put her on Chopped, she’d dominate. She’s just like “OK, I have these six things so I’ll do this…” And the other thing I’ll say about her is that her mother is a great cook and I’m certain Emily has learned things from her, but my wife’s style is very much her own. That is all to say this is sort of an anti-recipe. It’s more inspiration than anything. When I ask her about the meatballs, she tells me “It was my grandma’s recipe that I had deconstructed so a lazy millennial can make it.”

Here’s what she does. Very simple, but there are things you need to pay attention to: I sautéed the ground meat in the instant pot then added white onions and five cloves of chopped garlic and celery and carrots.” Again, no recipe, but I paid attention this time and saw one stalk of celery and one big carrot to go with the pound of ground meat. The next part is my inspiration. I introduced Emily to this a few years back and I’m proud she loves it so much.

Yeah boy! You add that Lawry's in there, then some pepper and a tablespoon-ish of white sugar “a couple” of cups of water and a chopped up head of cabbage. We have an Instant Pot that she pressure cooks the whole thing in for 14 minutes and then when it’s done, she adds in apple cider vinegar and some apricot jam to taste, and boom. She serves it on white rice, although I would also suggest doing it with egg noodles.

That is the first step. You eat that for dinner, then you save the leftovers. Making enough for it to sit overnight is crucial because the whole point of this post is you want to make a sandwich the next day, and you need all the juice and fat and stuff to mold together and let nature take its course. The next day you pull it out of the fridge and you gather the things you need: Bread. Cheese. Butter. Sauerkraut. That is it. If you want suggestions, I say rye bread. I used cheddar cheese, but it’s only because I didn’t have Swiss. I have to believe Swiss is optimal, but I have no complaints. For the kraut, I always trust the Germans and have a big barrel of the stuff handy. Bread, I like Eli’s. It’s a nice size, it’s got the oomph and it’s seeded but you can’t really tell. I have this weird thing with mushy rye that has a lot of seeds. It’s sort of gross. Eli’s is the perfect rye. It’s not too big and it’s a strong rye. There are so many wimpy rye breads out there. It’s really sad.

Preheat your oven to 350, get an oven-safe pan and melt some butter. I can’t tell you how important butter is to a melt, yet most places don’t use it. This is why I swear by B&H in the Village. That whitefish melt is ridiculous and has no business being that good, but the butter is the Dude’s rug of the whole thing because it ties the sandwich together.

Melt the butter then set your flame to medium. Put two slices of bread in there and let them sit for a minute before flipping and giving the other side a minute. Then get your leftover sweet and sour meatballs and this is where I get preachy and say don’t overstuff! I understand why you go to a place like Katz’s and they make a massive sandwich that they can charge you around thirty bucks for. One, it’s New York City and everything is expensive. Two, the overhead when it comes to running a famous pastrami place in the heart of the Lower East Side has got to be insane. Brisket is pricey, so you’ve probably got to sell a lot of it to make any sort of profit. That, and I know people see all that meat and they’re impressed. It’s a wild and crazy thing to see all that pastrami. I get it. But I also don’t like overdoing things. If I had my way, it would be a couple of slices of pastrami. That’s it. I don’t need all that pastrami! I don’t want all that anything. I just want some. And so for The Ruth, for the slices of bread that I’m using, I go for two nice tablespoons of leftover sweet and sour meatballs. That’s all you need. Trust me. You put that in the oven for about three minutes to let the meatballs warm, then you slap a slice of cheese on the other side. Again, I don’t overdo it, but maybe you like lots of cheese. You do you, my friend.

Sorry for the awful picture.

Two or three more minutes and it’s good to go. You pull this out and then I like to say I sprinkle the sauerkraut on top. I think it might come out to a tablespoon of kraut, but you know I don’t like to overdo things. I just don’t want this to become a wet sandwich. Also, I should point out that in the picture above you’ll notice bits of leftover rice which I put in the Tupperware the night prior and felt like a schmuck the next day. But I think it was a happy accident because a few bits of rice really help hold what could be a messy sandwich together. You put the bread together, give it a nice smoosh, serve it with a sour pickle and some chips, maybe drink a beer with it if you’re feeling wild, and boom. The Ruth. The sweet and sour meat melt.

Note: For some reason this post originally said she used a single clove of garlic and I wrote lettuce and not cabbage. Why? I do not know. It has been updated to say she used five or six cloves of garlic and cabbage.