Pastrami Melt on Sourdough with Charred Root Vegetables
current situation: pastrami melt on toasted sourdough with roasted veggies, pickles and pickled beet egg
An open sandwich, a pile of blackened vegetables and an egg the colour of a highlighter pen. It looks like somebody plated it on purpose, and the egg is the reason.
Pickled beet eggs take a week in the fridge and five minutes of work. Boiled eggs sit in the liquid from a jar of pickled beets and the colour creeps in from the outside, so a week in gives you magenta skin and a white ring and a yellow yolk, which is the whole visual.
The cheese is shaved, not melted. Big shards off a hard cheese with a peeler, laid on at the end so they soften over the hot pastrami without disappearing. A melt that has actually melted loses all of that.
- Feeds
- 2
- Hands-on
- 35 minutes
- Vegetables
- 40 minutes, hard roast
- Eggs
- A week ahead
What you need
The pickled beet eggs — a week ahead
- 6 eggs, boiled 9 minutes and peeled
- 1 jar pickled beets, with all its liquid
- 1/2 cup cider vinegar
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 bay leaf, 1 tsp peppercorns
The roasted vegetables
- 2 beetroot, in 1/2-inch cubes
- 3 carrots, in 1/2-inch cubes
- 2 potatoes, in 1/2-inch cubes
- 1 parsnip, in 1/2-inch cubes
- 1 red bell pepper, diced
- 3 tbsp oil or beef tallow
- Salt and plenty of coarse black pepper
The melt
- 4 thick slices sourdough
- Butter for the griddle
- 1/2 lb pastrami, sliced
- 1 cup sauerkraut, squeezed dry
- A hard cheese — aged gouda, pecorino or a dry cheddar — shaved with a peeler
- Sliced red onion
How it goes
1 — Eggs into beet brine a week out
Brine ingredients warmed until the sugar dissolves, cooled, poured over the peeled eggs with the beets in a jar. Fridge. They are pink in a day and that magenta in about five.
pro tip — Cut one open at day three and day seven. The colour creeps inward and you will want to know where you like it.
2 — Cut the vegetables small and roast them hard
Half-inch dice so there is more edge than middle, tossed in fat, spread on a hot tray at 450°F. Forty minutes, turned twice. You are after the almost-burnt corners in the picture, not gentle golden.
3 — Beetroot at one end of the tray
Same reason as always — it bleeds. The picture has carrot that is still orange, which only happens if the beet is kept to itself.
4 — Squeeze the sauerkraut properly dry
In a sieve, pressed with the back of a spoon until nothing more comes out. Wet kraut on griddled bread undoes everything the griddle just did.
5 — Griddle the sourdough in butter, one side only
Butter in a pan, bread down, three minutes until it is properly browned with darker patches. One side — this is an open sandwich and the top stays soft.
6 — Warm the pastrami, build on the hot side
Pastrami steamed in a covered pan for two minutes, then piled onto the griddled face of each slice. Sauerkraut over it, onion over that.
7 — Shave the cheese on last, off the heat
Long shards off a block with a vegetable peeler, laid over the hot meat where they slump but keep their shape. Do not put it under the broiler.
8 — Plate with the vegetables and an egg
Sandwich open-faced on one side, vegetables heaped beside it, one beet egg on the plate whole so the colour does its job.
The egg is the whole reason this plate looks like that. Make them a week early and you will keep making them. LFG.