Recipe of the Week: The Rob
Ingredients:
- Bread
- Roast Beef
- Swiss or Gouda cheese
- Kimchi
- Mayo
- Gochujaeng
- Olive oil
Method & Analysis:
For the final recipe of this regular season, I must return to my Unified Theory of Sandwiches. Maybe it’s because I live in the U.S., where gustatory quality and gustatory quantity are often considered one and the same, but there are times when I feel that we, as a whole people, have lost sight of what makes a sandwich good. Just about every sandwich I’ve had from every sandwich purveyor of any level of ambition has been stuffed as full as possible with its chosen filling, regardless of whether this creates a balanced sandwich or not.
This is most noticeable when I exchange my wife’s hard-earned money for a Reuben. Reubens are one of my very favorite sandwiches, but they are also absolutely the sort of sandwich that is best when the main components – corned beef (or pastrami), Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, and Russian dressing (or Thousand Island; not sure if this is owing to growing up in Minnesota or not but I didn’t know Russian dressing was a think until I was 25) – are present in more or less equal proportion. When every bite includes equal amounts of everything, the results are pure alchemy. It’s savory, a bit sweet, beautifully acidic, and deliciously fatty even when the beef is in a modest layer.
And yet, whenever I order Reuben from somewhere, it is invariably assembled with the meat standing in a roughly 4:1 ratio with everything else. Any Reuben I would consider proper would invariably get dragged to hell as a rip-off by those who stir shit up whenever their meal purchase doesn’t leave their intestinal tract feeling like the inside of a cement mixer. That’s just how we live these days; to complain about the state of the modern Reuben at any greater length is a profligate waste of my emotional resources, especially since I can take matters into my own hands.
This week’s recipe is not for an actual Reuben, rather, it is for a variant on the Reuben that I developed over time, and mostly by accident. One day, I made the prototype version of this sandwich because I wanted a Reuben but didn’t have the right ingredients, so I made something kind of like a Reuben with the stuff I had around. It isn’t quite the same combination of flavors, but it scratches a similar itch and like the original it’s at its best when the fillings are equally proportioned. I’m taking the liberty of naming it the Rob, because if anyone else came up with it first, they probably aren’t reading this.
This recipe does call for the sandwich to be pan fried, so you will need both a frying pan of some description and some form of spatula or other food-flipping device. I sure I hope I don’t have to say this out loud, but start by grabbing two slices of bread. A proper Reuben, of course, must be on rye bread, but in the spirit of improvisation that served as the impetus for its creation, the Rob can really be made with whatever bread is available, but for what it’s worth, I usually use whole wheat sourdough. Put a thin spread of may on each slice of bread, followed by a slightly thicker spread of gochujaeng, then, using smooth controlled motions with the condiment spreader of your choice, gently blend the mayo and gochujaeng together. You don’t have the blend them perfectly, or even anything close to perfectly. Just swirl them together until they’re warming up to each other.
Next, layer your fillings. Put on your roast beef, being sure that the average thickness of the roast beef layer does not exceed three deli cuts. Next, place your sliced cheese. As specified in the ingredients list, either Swiss cheese or Gouda cheese are acceptable. Gouda is ideal, but it’s also expensive and very specific, and altogether not the sort of cheese most people seem to have lying around, just because. You may use more than one slice of cheese if and only if one slice is not sufficient to cover the inside of the sandwich; if you need a second slice, make sure any cheese slice overlap occurs in the dead center. Finally, add a single layer of kimchi on top of the cheese. You may wish to drain some excess liquid as you remove it from the jar to tamp down the inevitable mess somewhat, but I always forget to do this.
Time to fry! Put your pan on medium heat, then flip your sandwich over so that the slice of bread facing up is the one directly underneath the meat. Drizzle a little olive oil on the bread and spread it into a thin, even layer. Add more oil if and only if you need to in order to get a thin layer on all of the bread, and use as little oil as necessary to achieve this. One the pan is hot, place the sandwich in, oil side down, then drizzle and spread oil on the top, un-oiled slice that is now facing up at you. Cook the sandwich on the first side for several minutes, until the cheese is starting to wilt and sweat, then flip and continue frying until the cheese is melty. Remove the sandwich from the pan and flip it again on the serving vessel, so that the meat is on bottom and the kimchi is on top.
Dig in! Note how this sandwich scratches a similar itch as a Rueben. It’s salty, it’s tangy, and it is most certainly fatty. But also, note how while it is less directly acidic, it’s also smoky and a little bit sweet and pleasantly spicy. The lesson here is twofold. First and foremost, whenever you make your sandwiches, make sure you attune to and aim for that sandwich’s proper balance, whatever that may be! Second, this shit is delicious and arose from a scenario in which I wanted one thing and couldn’t get it, forcing me to improvise. Go ye and do likewise.
Week 18 NFL Confidence Pool
There really is nothing worse than whiffing on a 16-point assignment. Each and every one of my confidence pool failures always comes at a heavy emotional cost, and when that failure sinks my week all by itself, that cost is amplified. 16 on the Eagles!? How have I been paying so little attention to and been so dismissive of their recent struggles? Have I been so out of the loop that I’ve insulated myself from Eagles fans complaining!? I’m reasonably certain the answer to that last question is no; Eagles fans complain about everything, all the time, regardless of how their season is going, so I’ve learned to ignore basically everything they say. But still! That was an entirely preventable error. I don’t think there was any universe in which I was both gutsy and prescient enough to actually pick the Cardinals, but a smarter, savvier picker would’ve at least hedged on the assignment.
Not only must I live with the titanic bummer of ruining week 17 with this botched assignment, I must now go into the final week of the regular season with absolutely no idea what I’m doing with either my picks or my assignments. The final week of the regular season can only be so interesting in the best of years, but with both 1-seeds locked in and most of the other playoff teams and seeds set, this final week is a perfect storm of dull chaos. This is my last chance to get my points and percentages up, and I’ve already completely lost track of how many teams are resting their starters. Hell, there are some games (49ers vs. Rams, for example) where I know that both teams are resting starters! And of course, as has been the case for years now, all games in the final week of the regular season are division rivalry matchups. How the hell am I even supposed to pick those, let alone assign them!? Sheesh!
As a result, this week’s picks can only be considered a rough sketch of a partial outline of a first draft of a possible way to conceive of what a week 18 pool could potentially look like. These picks don’t even clear the bar of ‘vibes-based’. Rather, the following picks and assignments are a string of free associations, having less to do with the prospects of victory of each team in question and more to do with the moods, feelings, and memories that my brain conjures when I hear a given team’s name. Almost all of these mental ephemera are tied to remembrances of countless seasons of Tecmo Super Bowl and reddit power rankings from 7 years ago than they are to anything that could be mistaken for having any bearing on the sport and the league as they exist today.
All of this is to say that, if you are on the fringes of getting a season payout but can only secure one with an excellent Week 18, you are screwed. I’m sorry, but I must be blunt in this regard, so that you not waste any of your mental energy in service of getting your hopes up. There cannot be any such hope. The only hope I can offer is that you should consider yourself lucky if you whiff on only one double-digit assignment, which only counts an offering of hope in the same way that a boomer uncle telling you to be grateful you didn’t die face down in a ditch in ‘Nam does. If you intend to use these craptastic picks to close out a season prize bid, you’ve already lost. I implore you to accept your fate already.
Anyway, once more to the breach, or whatever.
Week 17 Correct Picks: 11/16 (0.688)
Season Total Correct Picks: 175/256 (0.683)
Week 17 Points: 104/136 (0.765)
Season Total Points: 1,502/2,069 (0.726)
16 Points: Cowboys over Commanders
15 Points: Lions over Vikings
14 Points: Steelers over Ravens
13 Points: Texans over Colts
12 Points: Buccaneers over Panthers
11 Points: Eagles over Giants
10 Points: Saints over Falcons
9 Points: Bills over Dolphins
The Cowboys/Commies tilt is the one and only game in which a team with something to play for (the Cowboys need a win to sew up the NFC East) is playing a truly dismal opponent, and therefore, the only real mismatch of the week. The Eagles are also one of the witheringly few teams with something on the line this week (a last gasping attempt to steal back the aforementioned NFC East), but hell if I’m giving them 15 a week after they cost me 16. Instead, I’m giving the Lions 15 not because they deserve it, but because the Vikings are fall-off-the-bone cooked, and Dan Campbell doesn’t strike me as the resting starters type, even though the Lions are essentially locked in to the 3-seed. The Eagles can get a measly 11 and thank me for my generosity.
The Steelers still suck, but they are playing for a Wild Card against a team that is resting the MVP and assuredly resting everyone else of consequence. The Texans are better than the Colts and also playing for a playoff bid, but since I have no idea how the Colts won as many games as they did in the first place I’m being cautious. And, in the bluntest illustration of how and why this week’s slate is so unspeakably dire, I have double digits on not just one (that would be bad enough) but two entire NFC South teams, because the Panthers are an abomination and because I may as well take one last opportunity to stick it to the Falcons, who proved to be exactly as unserious as I said they would be back in September.
Finally, I am picking the Bills to win not because I think their victory is assured – their uneven victories of the past couple weeks have demonstrated that it very much is not – but because I do think that, having clawed their way back from the dead, they are fueled by destiny itself and will steal the division back from the equally-if-not-more-so fraudulent Dolphins, in accordance with prophecy.
8 Points: Seahawks over Cardinals
7 Points: Chiefs over Chargers
6 Points: 49ers over Rams
5 Points: Raiders over Broncos
4 Points: Bengals over Browns
3 Points: Bears over Packers
2 Points: Titans over Jaguars
1 Point: Patriots over Jets
Then, of course, there’s the rest of this sorry slate, assigned roughly in order of the perceived seriousness of each team’s backup QB situation. I stopped considering the Seahawks good a while ago, but if you’re looking for ways to improve upon these shambolic assignments I do think there’s an argument for giving them more points. I’m also going rogue in picking the Bears, who have done a decent job of just barely salvaging stray fragments of what once appeared to be a cursed and doomed season, and I have a hunch that the Packers will fail to take them seriously.
Finally, if this is to be Bill Belichick’s last game as Patriots coach, we shall see his tenure end the same way it began: by telling the Jets to eat shit.
* * * * *
Next week is the Wild Card Round, which means it’s time for the glorious return of the NFL Playoffs MegaColumn! Featuring:
- The 2023 Minnesota Vikings Postmortem!
- The Playoff Confidence Pool!
- Wild Card Round Picks Against the Spread, because I’ve decided I need to be even worse at this!
- Maybe one or two other things, I’m not sure!
Be here next Friday, January 12th, for this glorious display of self-indulgent and disrespectful anarchy! Enjoy the games, everyone!
Rob Writes About Whatever 