Novel Food Autumn 2010: Muffuletta

According to an article that appeared in Gourmet magazine in January 2009, "when Salvatore Lupo opened the Central Grocery in 1906, the downriver end of the French Quarter was referred to as Little Palermo," because thousands of Sicilians had settled in New Orleans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries—and a whole lot of them opened small groceries. The Central Grocery, the most famous of the groceries and still in operation today, served up something called a muffuletta, a large, round sandwich filled with meats, cheeses, and olive salad, drenched in olive oil and reeking of garlic.

Photo from Wikipedia.

For this edition of Novel Food, I chose a book called Chasing the Devil's Tail, by David Fulmer. The story is set in late 19th-century New Orleans, and seeing as how the protagonist, a private detective named Valentin St. Cyr, is half Sicilian, the famed sandwich seemed a most excellent meal to make in its honor.

The action takes place mostly in Storyville, the red-light district of New Orleans, and it begins in 1897. Someone is murdering prostitutes in the district, and St. Cyr, who works for Storyville boss Tom Anderson, is called on to track down the killer. It looks as though St. Cyr's beloved childhood friend, a trumpet player named Buddy Bolden who's half out of his mind much of the time due to alcohol and drugs and the wild "jass" he's introduced to a cross-section of New Orleans society in various bars and clubs, is the killer. It looks an awful lot like that. But you'll just have to read the book to find out if it's true.

St. Cyr is a very interesting character; half Sicilian and half African-American, his skin is so light that "he could pass for all Dago." His father was murdered during a backlash against the Italians when he was fifteen; his mother sent him to relatives in Chicago afterward and then disappeared. St. Cyr returned to New Orleans to try to find her, but he never did.

On one occasion St. Cyr tells his paramour, a "soiled dove" named Justine, about his sad past, thinking, as he does, about how he never really grieved his losses and about the armor he's placed around himself in order to survive.

Just look at what happened when the walls did come down. Look at Buddy Bolden, falling into pieces, disintegrating by slow degrees, because he had no true defense against a harsh world.

His mind wandered for a few minutes. Justine's breathing deepened against his chest. "There's something else," he said.

"Hmm?"

"Something I'd better tell you." She opened sleepy eyes. "Valentin St. Cyr is not my true name."

She sat up, blinking slowly. "What is it?"

"Valentino Saracena," he said in a low voice, as if there was someone just outside the room who might hear.

She repeated it slowly. "Val-en-ti-no Sa-ra-ce-na. Something wrong with that?"

"No, there's nothing wrong with it," he murmered. "I felt that I had to change it if I was going to stay here. For all I knew, those fellows killed my father were still about." He smiled dimly. "And everybody knows a Dago never forgets an injury."

Great book; I highly recommend it and the follow-up novel Jass. Two more installments of the St. Cyr mysteries are also available; the third is called Rampart Street, the fourth, Lost River, and I look forward to reading both of them soon.

Now, about the muffuletta. I found recipes for the two main components, the olive salad and the bread, as well as instructions for putting the whole thing together, on a site called Nola Cuisine.

First off, the bread. I'll let you go to the Nola Cuisine site to get the recipe, but you start by mixing yeast with sugar and water and letting it get foamy. Then you rub lard (I used my own homemade lard!) into a flour mixture, and you stir everything together until it makes a dough, which you knead for 5 to 10 minutes. You let the dough rise once, then shape it into a round loaf and let it rise again. Cover with sesame seeds and an egg wash and bake, and there you have it: a 10-inch round ready to be sliced and filled.

While the bread is doing its thing, you can make the olive salad. Again, the recipe that I used is on the Nola Cuisine site. Two kinds of olives, a jar of giardiniera in brine, pepperoncini, roasted red peppers, and more, including oregano and parsley (both of which I have growing on the back patio—I was thrilled to be able to use my own fresh oregano), plus plenty of fresh garlic, are bathed in olive oil and a bit of vinegar and left to marinate.

I want to tell you, this stuff was fantastic—one of the best things to eat ever. Even if you're not making a muffuletta, you can just eat the olive salad on its own or use it as an accompaniment to any number of other foods or on an antipasto plate.

We procured the mortadella, the Provolone, and the Kalamata olives from the Art Mart in Urbana; the green olives, olive oil, and giardiniera from World Harvest; the salami and mozzarella from Schnucks; the ham from Triple S Farm; and the red peppers and garlic from farmers' market. Yep, it was quite an endeavor to assemble all of the ingredients, but so worth the effort.

A number of other food bloggers joined Simona, my partner in this Novel Food event, and me in cooking from books. I'll link to half of the submissions here; please do go and check out the other half of the roundup on Simona's blog.

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Holly, of the local blog The Melby Family, brought an enormous cake to this little party in honor of her daughter Keira's half-birthday.

Holly got the idea for the cake from a children's book called Whopper Cake. And it is a whopper of a cake, no? Very, um, sweet—Keira as well as the cake.

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Heather, of the blog Girlichef, took her inspiration from a book called Garden Spells, by Sarah Addison Allen. Heather used flowers, corn, and honey to created marigold honey and marigold corn pone, and both look absolutely beautiful and delicious.

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Lisa, who writes the online journal fink_girl, cooked up a dish that might have been served on a buffet at one of the parties described in F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby: Spiced Fruited Ham Slices. A classic dish for a classic novel.

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Adele, who writes and cooks for the blog Tales of the Basil Queen, used a novel called Tokyo Fiancée as her inspiration. The novel, about TCK (third-culture kids—according to Wikipedia, "people who, as children, have spent a significant period of time in one or more culture(s) other than their own, thus integrating elements of those cultures and their own birth culture into a third culture"), inspired her to make a Shrimp Omelette with Ginger and Garlic.

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Susan, the Well-Seasoned Cook, took her culinary inspiration from the short stories of Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Mr. Quin.

Susan created White Chocolate Peppermint Truffle Cups in honor, especially, of the story "The World's End." Wish I had a spoon.

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Sandi, of Whistlestop Cafe Cooking, whipped up a batch of beautiful buttermilk biscuits like Sipsey would have made in Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe, by Fannie Flagg (I've actually never read the novel; I've only seen the wonderful movie). Don't the biscuits look heavenly?

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Thank you so much to everyone who joined Simona and me for this Autumn 2010 edition of Novel Food. We love hearing about the books you're reading and vicariously tasting the dishes they inspired you to make.

Don't forget to go and see Simona's entry for NF (she made two versions of Bouillabaisse, the exquisite seafood soup from Marseilles), and also check out her half of this roundup; there are more tasty books and food to be had there.

As always, here's to good reading and eating. See you next time!