Muffuletta & Olive Salad

REMEMBERING OUR FALLEN HEROS

I could have broken this into a couple of posts but I wanted us to get our muffuletta's worth.

I recently had the urge for a muffuletta sandwich which is not an easy desire to fill here in our area due to the ingredients as it is an Italian sandwich and there are no Italian markets around these parts.  The muffuletta was created in 1906 at the Central Grocery in New Orleans by Sicilian immigrant Salvatore Lupo and we ate one of theirs during a trip to NOLA in 2010 – actually we just ate half of one. 

To start the process of filling my desire, I asked Bev to stop by Fresh Market on a recent Knoxville trip and see if they had mortadella and capicola – and they did.  Muffuletta’s use a special bread but we would have to bake it ourselves so I just bought some Kaiser rolls.  I picked up some salami and provolone locally but forgot to get ham so we went without it – we generally always have some in the fridge but we were out.  For the most important ingredient, we made our own olive salad using the recipe from Justin Hankins which is billed as a Central Grocery clone. 

Olive Salad

Ingredients:

1.5 cups green olives pitted

1.5 cups kalamata olives pitted

1 cup gardiniera

1 tbsp capers

3 cloves garlic minced

1/8 cup celery thinly sliced

1 tbsp Italian parsley finely chopped

1 tbsp fresh oregano finely chopped

1 tsp red pepper flakes

1 tbsp green onions thinly sliced

1/4 cup roasted red peppers (recipe below)

3 tbsp red wine vinegar

1.5 cup olive oil

Instructions:

1. Chop all ingredients to your desired consistency – Bev used the food processor for the olives and giardiniera to get the size we wanted.

2. Combine everything together into a bowl.

To build the sandwich, I sliced the bread and began stacking the ingredients: Capicola, mortadella, cheese, mortadella, salami, olive salad.

The Verdict:

Since I grew up eating a lot of Italian flavors, I thought the sandwich was pretty awesome so I ate the whole thing and was stuffed.  Bev said it was okay but she prefers a sandwich with lettuce, tomato, and mayo – Spaghetti was her only Italian food as a kid, and didn't eat her first pizza until she was in college.  Next time, I will make my own giardiniera for the olive salad as the store-bought stuff was pretty pathetic.

Breakfast:

Bev only ate half of her sandwich so I turned the other half into breakfast.  I opened it up, added olive salad to the bottom half, and nuked it for 30 seconds to take the chill off. Then it was two rich-yolked fried eggs from free range chickens – I know this because they are pecking around in the yard when I do an egg pick-up.

It may be hard to believe but even a muffuletta is better with egg on top.

And this set of meals would not be complete without a 3-egg muffuletta omelet.  I nuked the meats for 30 seconds to take the chill off.

When the eggs were nearly set, I added the meat and cheese and covered the pan until the cheese melted. 

Then plated and topped with olive salad for a delicious breakfast.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

05/25/22 event date