This week on So Much On My Plate, some culinary highlights of my visit last week to New Orleans, including the legendary Muffuletta sandwich. These sandwiches are made on a round loaf of Italian bread, piled high with cold cuts and a special olive spread. The Central Grocery Company, established in 1906 in New Orleans, purports to be the home of ‘the original’ muffuletta. Whether that’s true or not I don’t know, but I liked the sandwiches there enough to buy two of them!
Here’s how I tried to recreate the sandwich at home, you can certainly play with the ingredients to taste:
Ingredients:
1 cup pitted Greek olives, chopped
1 cup pimento-stuffed green olives, chopped
2 cups Italian pickled vegetables, sometimes called giardiniere, larger bits chopped
1 small jar capers, drained
1 tsp. black pepper
1/2 cup olive oil
Combine all ingredients and refrigerate for at least 24 hours before using.
For each sandwich, you need the following:
1 Italian bun, cut in half
slices of mozzarella and provolone cheese
sliced ham, Genoa salami and mortadella salami
Put one layer of each meat on the bottom half of the bun. Top with one layer of each cheese, then put another layer of all the meats on top of the cheese. Top with a generous helping of the olive spread and top with the upper half of the bun. These sandwiches are better if you let them sit for a bit, so wrap tightly in waxed paper and refrigerate to help the sandwich hold its shape when you eat it.
(but take it out of the waxed paper!)
The cocktail I made today is called the Sazerac, a classic from New Orleans. You can read about the history here, and get the recipe here. It calls for absinthe, which is now legal to buy in Canada, but you can use something like pernod or sambuca instead.
