"Pastrami"

While everyone eats corned beef and cabbage for St. Patrick's Day, well, my kids refused to eat cabbage. This made the day stressful sometimes, along with their obvious repulsion at the white, flabby fat on the boiled corned beef.

Then Nora grew up, and suggested we have reubens instead. I decided to have some fun with that. Rather than getting sliced corned beef at the deli, I bought a corned beef (out of that big bin of them at the grocery store) and smoked it. I made...pastrami, kind of. Here's how I did it.

Flat cut, washed and trimmed

Get your corned beef, a flat cut, not a point. Take it home, slice it open and wash off all that slop that looks kind of like strawberry pie glaze. Trim off the really thick pieces of fat, if there are any. Pat it dry, and then cover it in a thin layer -- really thin, like just enough to wet it -- of spicy brown or Dijon mustard, and then sprinkle it with a mixture of the spice packet that came in the corned beef and your favorite BBQ rub. Wrap it in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least two hours; I did ours overnight.

Out of the smoker, cooled, ready to slice

When you're ready to smoke, get the beef out and let it warm up a bit. Get your smoker going at about 240° (I used a mix of hickory and apple woods), and put the beef in (works best if you put it in a pan). When the beef hits 160°, take it out, wrap foil over the top, and put it in your oven, preheated to 240°. Run that till the beef's internal temperature hits 200°. Take it out, leave it covered, and let it cool. Then cover with plastic wrap on a plate, and refrigerate. Slice thinly longwise when cool.

Sliced and ready for action

Layer on rye bread (or the marble stuff; I used the Pepperidge Farms marble) with Swiss cheese, kraut, and Russian dressing. Lube the outside of the bread with a thin layer of mayo and do the grilled cheese thing. Eat up.