The New Orleans Sandwich You Need to Try

There are sandwiches and then there's the muffuletta sandwich which is one giant glorious sandwich made in a whole loaf of bread. It has Italian fillings like lovely salami, mozzarella and giardiniera which are pickled vegetables but in fact this originated in America. So let's start with a little bit of a mayonnaise to go in this. I love the combination of mayonnaise and seeded mustard to make a bit of a Dijonnaise if you like. So two tablespoons of mayonnaise into the seeded mustard. More seeded mustard to mayonnaise and the reason I do that is because I don't want it to be too rich with the mayonnaise. I am adding lots of cheese to it and some olive oil so this is just a light touch to it. Give that a mix. Okay that's one thing done. The giardiniera comes like this and you can get it from all your supermarkets. It's got a combination of pickles, olives, pickled carrots, even pickled cauliflower. So delicious, really crunchy. I'm going to take it out of the bowl and I want to roughly chop it. So just get everything prepped and chopped before you start building the sandwich. There's also some pickled onions in here which is just delicious. I like the tang of the vinegar with this because it goes so well with the creamy cheese and all of our delicious deli cuts and for me a sandwich like this must have at least three deli cuts. I'm using a combination of the salami, double smoked ham and some turkey and we'll just place it back into the bowl now. You can see that there's also some roasted capsicum. Lovely combo. All right onto the bread. What I've done is remove the top. So I've used a serrated knife just to cut the top of the loaf just like that and now we need to take out the center. So I'm just going to use a sharp little knife to essentially make a nest so we can fill it up with all of our ingredients. So just cut that. I'm using a sourdough loaf. You can also use a ciabatta. Essentially you want something that's quite sturdy. You don't want to be too soft because we are going to press it and let it sit in the fridge for a while just so all those flavors can mingle. So I'm just going to take this out and do not throw this. This makes the best bread crumbs. Once you've made the bread crumbs just place them into a ziplock bag either in the pantry. I even sometimes store them in the freezer. They still work really really well. All right well that's looking pretty good. I'll also take some of the filling from the top just so we've got maximum space. Fantastic and we'll pop that to the side along with the top. We'll use that in a moment. Okay I like to add the mayonnaise to the base. A couple of spoonfuls and then spread that all along the base of this and on the sides and just reserve a little bit for the top later on too. And then I start with the deli cuts. I'm going ahead with the salami. So I've got some suppressor salami. This is one of the most popular ones for good reason because it's got a lovely flavor to it. A bit of pepper through there too and you can see the size of this is absolutely perfect for this size mufaleta. So you can be quite generous with your suppressor salami. Olives next. I've got a combination of Sicilian, green and kalamata. Spreading them out. Some basil. Just a few leaves of basil and some buffalo mozzarella. So I'm just going to just thinly cut it into rounds. If you didn't want to use buffalo mozzarella you could use some parmesan. Even some provolone cheese would be quite nice with this. I just love the creaminess of this beautiful cheese. It goes so nicely with the deli cuts. Okay in that goes. Just side by side so when you cut into it you see a perfect line of mozzarella and really press that down. A handful of our giardiniera and I have some rocket here for a little peppery touch. Okay first layer done. Drizzle some extra virgin olive oil over the top and now we're going to continue the layers. So now that I've done the salami the next layer is going to be some double smoked ham. It's really nice and thin so I'm going to double the layers then we'll continue the process with more mozzarella, giardiniera and then to top it off some shaved turkey. Shaved turkey is the last layer. I have been pressing it down so it's quite compact and then for the top I've just got a little bit more of that seeded mustard mayonnaise. I'll just spoon that on the top. Spread that around and I will add just the smallest amount of extra virgin olive oil too just to tie everything together. Drizzle that over and that's it. Lid goes on. Press that down. I'm going to take this over to a really large piece of cling film. We're going to wrap it quite tightly. So nice and tight. I'm going to place a baking sheet on top and then some jars that I've got in the fridge. By doing that we're going to compact it even more. Morpholeta is out of the fridge so let's unwrap it. It's a good idea to also bring it to room temperature. I mean any sandwich that is too cold is not going to taste as nice as a room temperature one so I brought this out about 20 minutes ago and instead of cutting here I'm just going to cut straight down the center so you can see how beautiful it is in the center. Let's open that up. Oh look at that. Layers of deliciousness. You've got the turkey on the top, the shaved ham in the center and that beautiful suppressor salami and I'm going to cut a large chunk of this. Just want to hold it on the top there so it stays in its shape. Just place it onto the plate. Wow that is really taking sandwich making to the next level. I love this. It's got an Italian name Morpholeta but its origins are in America. Loads of deli cuts there, beautiful cheese and pickles. Next picnic, pop this on the menu.