How to Make a Sandwich

Not just any sandwich, though, the best sandwich.

First, butter your bread. This step is essential, don't try to tell me you don't like butter or whatever, you're a liar and you know it. Butter's delicious. Butter both sides. Really slather it on.

Next, chop up some avocado. Some people like to squish it up and spread it over their bread in a thin layer that you can't even taste. Those people are wrong. And if you even think about arguing that you don't need to spread butter on there because the avocado makes up for it, just leave now.

Next slice a gherkin¹ into thirds, lengthwise and then cut the slices in half the other way. If you like, you can do a second one as well. Sometimes I do, sometimes, I just go with one, as illustrated here.

This next step is optional, and I often don't bother with it, and also there are a few different choices you can go with. And I know there will be some of you who will think this part is totally unnecessary, so feel free to skip it.

That warning out of the way, here are your choices. You can use lettuce, baby spinach, or a green salad mix. I know, it's a bunch of leaves, and that seems like a terrible thing to put in a sandwich, but consider this: Popeye likes spinach, and he seems pretty cool. I would have used spinach here but the supermarket didn't have any, so I got a bag of mixed leaves, which does include some spinach.

Once you've made you leaf-choice, squirt some mayonnaise on top. If you don't have squirty mayonnaise you'll need to spread it on the other slice of bread.

Then put some cheese on the other slice. You may think this will cause problems later, but don't panic, I have a plan. That cheese will stay right where we want it.

Next you'll want to add a decent layer of meat. I've gone with some white Hungarian salami here, but there are many fine choices available, from other types of salami to ham, bacon or even steak. Or why not combine two or three of those options? Well, ordinarily I would commend your initiative, but in this case there is a reason. We can't let the sandwich get too thick or we'll be in trouble later. So restrain yourself somewhat here, and if you are going to combine meats then make them thin ones.

Now you'll want to take the slice of bread with cheese on and put it under the gorilla². This is a good opportunity to put the kettle on. You can put both sides in at this point if you want to warm up the inside of the sandwich, but it will slow down the proceedings, and it will obviously change the nature of your ingredients. Salami in particular shrinks a bit when subjected to direct heat, so you get less coverage.

While the grill's heating up and the cheese is melting, slice up some tomato and whack that on top of the salami, then when your kettle's boiled you can make the tea, and once you're done with that it should be time to take the cheesy bread out of the grill.

Assuming that you've done this properly, your melted cheese will stick to the bread quite well, so you'll be able to tip it over and put it on top of the rest to close up your sandwich. If you're content with half measures you could leave it at that, it would be perfectly edible, but why settle for less than perfection here? Chuck the whole thing back under the gorilla. You might want to squish it down a bit first to make sure it will actually fit, and make the end result a little easier to hold.

You'll need to watch it like a hawk at this point, because it takes only seconds to go from "toast" to "burnt to shit", and losing your sandwich at this stage would be devastating. As soon as one side's toasted, flip it over (very carefully, because again, losing it at this stage would be devastating) and put it back in.

At this point your should have just enough time to pour the tea before the second side has finished toasting.

You'll probably want to cut that in half before you try to eat it, because it can get a bit hard to handle. You may also want to have a serviette on hand.

¹ For any Americans reading, I believe you call gherkins "pickles", but who really knows with you people.
² Again for Americans, I believe you refer to grills as "broilers" for some reason. Learn English.