Slices of life
Assembled on a plate and topped with sauce, sandwich ingredients become a warm, homey meal
A perfect open-faced sandwich is nothing without gravy. The turkey is important, of course. You can't build a sandwich without the main ingredient, after all. But gravy is the star. It soaks into the meat, then into the bread, then, finally, into the soul.
Gravy isn't always around several days after Thanksgiving, even if the turkey carcass hasn't been picked clean. By this morning, if you still want an open-faced sandwich - if the modern version of a 1950s cafeteria lunch is just the thing to take the chill off a brisk afternoon - you'll need to make more gravy.
A quick version, substituting chicken stock for turkey, will do fine. Enhance it by adding some turkey bones while it simmers, or a splash of wine or cognac (we like sherry, too). Then spoon cranberry relish onto thick slices of white sandwich bread, for color and sweetness, and top with the turkey and gravy.
When both the bird and its accompaniments are gone, you can make a simple white sauce for more open-faced sandwiches - tuna and Cheddar, kippered salmon and peas, spinach and caramelized onions. They all offer the same kind of sustenance: a cozy meal and a dose of nostalgia. (Recipes follow.)
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