In Praise of the Muffeletta
August 1st is Lammas, the feast of the first harvest. One of the ways that many Pagans and Wiccans celebrate Lammas is to eat fresh bread, so today is a great day to talk about one of the best-known sandwiches in New Orleans, the muffeletta:
The Recipe:
The bread for a muff is important. The classic New Orleans muff is made on a loaf of round Italian bread from United Bakery on St. Bernard Avenue, downtown.
There are three meats in a muffeletta, ham, salami, and mortadella. For the ham, we're using good Chisesi's boiled ham. You can use Parma or Capri ham from your favorite Italian deli if you like. This boiled ham is classic po-boy ham, and works just fine.
Genoa salami, "hard" salami, as opposed to cotto salami.
The premier meat from the Bologna region, mortadella. You can see the difference between regular bologna and mortadella because mortadella has flecks of fat throughout the sausage.
Provolone cheese. Mozzerella can be substituted if provolone is unavailable.
Olive Salad. I'll post the recipe in a separate entry. This olive salad is from Progress Grocery.
To toast or not toast the bread? My favorite muff comes from Napoleon House on Rue Chartres, and they do a "hot muff," where the bread is warmed.
Drizzle some of the olive oil from the olive salad onto the bread.
Assemble the cheese and meats, starting with the cheese, so it melts a bit on the warm bread.
Then the meats.
Now the olive salad.
put it all together and grab yourself a beer.
To finish off, for dessert, get yourself a Hubig's Pie.
What's a Hubig's Pie
