Meat attack!

We had our muffuletta night on Sunday. For once, I actually followed a recipe (mostly) and I think we might have regretted it. There was actually too much meat on the sandwiches! Jane, Karen, and Kate came over. Jane had to take some meat out of her sandwich just to finish it. Karen had to take some out just to balance the ratio of cheese to meat to olive salad. Kate, Beth and I soldiered through but it took us a while to finish!.
I combined the recipes for muffuletta from American Sandwich and Roadfood Sandwiches. Each called for heaps of meat, some cheese, and the olive salad to be piled on a round Italian loaf. I made the olive salad with lots of green and calamata olives, plus celery, carrots, cocktail onions, capers, giardiniera peppers, garlic, oregano, red wine vinegar, and olive oil. That marinated for a day.

Then we had to make a trip to Cossetta's for the rest of the ingredients. We got Genoa salami, mortadella, capicola, smoked ham, mozzarella and provolone. They slice the meat so thin there, you can see through it. It's awesome. And they lay it out all pretty on paper. Luckily they had 2 Italian round loaves left for our feast. Armed with all of our delicious purchase, we pushed our way out the back door, like salmon swimming upstream against a current of girls and their parents grabbing a slice before the matinee of Disney's High School Musical on Ice. Fun.

The Roadfood Sandwiches recipe recommended slicing the loaf in half, then digging out about half the bread from the interior. Good idea, except you can't really tell just how much meat you have layered on the bread, when it's stacking up into a hole. I layered meats and cheeses, then piled some marinated onions (at the suggestion of American Sandwich) and the olive salad on top. I put the top of the bread on and squished it down. Then we went to watch the first half of the ANTM finale.

After bidding toothy sarcastic Jenah farewell--good luck, you might actually have a modelling career if you never speak or show your teeth--we cut into the monster. We were shocked at the enormous pile of meat that fit into the sandwich. Following the recipe, we cut those suckers into quarters and settled down for the second half of ANTM. (And the beginnings of gout from all the cured meat, most certainly.)

The sandwich was pretty tasty. Not the greatest, but tasty. Since I've been eating the leftovers for a couple days now, I will say that it improves with age. And it is better when cut into 1/8ths. We were sad that Angie couldn't make it, since this sandwich is right up her alley. Perhaps we can have a reprise, and make it two days beforehand, and cut it in smaller pieces. Oh, the possibilities!