Batter-Splattered

Salmon Club Sandwich

Well, my husband has yet to catch a salmon this year in spite of three -- count them -- three overnight fishing expeditions down at the creek. The fish, they just aren't running yet, is what he tells me. Something about high and cloudy water.

He's pretty good with a rod and reel, so I suppose I'll believe him. Although. He doesn't particularly care for salmon and so he leans in the direction of catch-and-release. But. This year I mentioned that if he catches a ton of salmon, we could trade quite alot of it for the halibut that some friends catch by the boatful (literally) every summer in Homer. He perked up at that thought. Now, halibut he likes. I figured he was sure to bring home the salmon if it meant he could swap it for halibut.

But.

Nothing.

Luckily, his friend caught one though and he's plum out of freezer space, so my husband brought that massive king salmon home to store in our freezer and we got to keep some hunks of it.

And when I say 'hunks,' I mean hunks. I'm not kiddin' around. Well, see for yourself:

 

 I whacked that king into chunks and grilled 'em up. And then I used them for this recipe for a salmon club sandwich. That's grilled and toasty sourdough bread there on top.

This particular club sandwich recipe has you whip up a divine lemon basil mayonnaise with minced fresh basil, grated lemon peel and, of course, some mayo. And you can't forget about the bacon. I'll think you'll agree with me that anytime bacon is involved at the dinner table, you're talking party-time. And once you're done cooking the bacon till crispy, you lay those strips on a paper-towel-lined plate, then saute up some sliced red onion in the drippings.

It all comes together to be deliciously sinful. I had mine with a handful of salt and vinegar chips and an Alaskan IPA poured into a glass I specially put in the freezer for an hour or two to get it all nice and frosty..

The original recipe, as provided below, calls for slices of tomato but I didn't include those on my sandwich. For me, salmon and tomato just don't mix. I also don't think halibut and tomatoes go together all that well.

I know, I know. It's a bold statement considering the wealth of halibut-tomato recipes out there, but I'm standing by my aversion.

Just the thought of fish and tomatoes mixing it up together reminds me of being a kid and getting absolutely disgusted if a tiny bit of ketchup touched my baked potato or peas.

And I was in love with ketchup. Still am. In fact, back then, I would not only dip a french fry into a massive plop of ketchup, but I'd also get my fingers in there too so that as I ate the fry, I could lick the extra ketchup off my fingers. Oh dear. My dad thought I was disgusting. And he was right to think so.

But you feel free to go on ahead and slice you up some tomatoes and enjoy this recipe to the fullest.

To me, this tastes like summertime.

Salmon Club Sandwich

Serves four

6 tablespoons mayonnaise
5 tablespoons minced fresh basil
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel

3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
4 5- to 6-ounce skinless salmon fillets (each about 3/4 inch thick)

8 bacon slices
1 small red onion, sliced

8 1/2-inch-thick sourdough or country-style white bread slices (each about 5x3 inches)
8 tomato slices
8 lettuce leaves

Mix mayonnaise, 2 tablespoons basil and lemon peel in small bowl to blend. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Cover and chill.)

Mix remaining 3 tablespoons basil, olive oil and lemon juice in large glass baking dish. Add salmon to oil mixture; turn to coat. Cover; chill 1 to 4 hours.
Cook bacon in heavy large skillet over medium-high heat until crisp. Using tongs, transfer bacon to paper towels to drain. Add onion to drippings in skillet. Sauté until onion is tender and beginning to brown, about 5 minutes.

Prepare barbecue (medium-high heat). Grill fish until just opaque in center, about 3 minutes per side. Grill bread just until golden, about 2 minutes per side.
Spread mayonnaise mixture over 1 side of bread slices. Top each of 4 bread slices with 2 bacon slices, 2 tomato slices, 1/4 of onion, 1 salmon fillet and 2 lettuce leaves. Cover with remaining bread slices.

  

Turkey Paisano Sandwiches with Black Currant and Black Olive Vinaigrette

Yesterday, I found my new favorite noodles.

Well, today I found my new favorite sandwich.

The Lake Austin Spa Resort in Austin, Texas created this beauty of a sandwich. They describe it as a 'two-fisted meal,' healthful, and full of good fats from olives and olive oil. The peppers and tomatoes add Vitamin C and beta-carotene -- both a boost to the immune system. It was featured in the pages of Self magazine, which I like because it's the one major women's 'health' magazine that doesn't feature toothpick thin women in bikins on the cover.

The sandwich also has roasted red bell pepper. Red onion. Provolone cheese. Smoked turkey. Sliced tomatoes. The only thing I forgot to add was shredded lettuce.

The black currant and black olive vinaigrette is what really makes it shine. Don't worry if you're fresh out of black currant jam though because the original recipe calls for fig or raspberry preserves. I think any deep-colored jam or preserves would be just lovely. Look at the color of the sauce with its preserves, red wine vinegar, minced garlic, black olives, and dijon mustard:

It's so good.

Turkey Paisano Sandwiches with Black Currant and Black Olive Vinaigrette

1 clove garlic

2 T kalamata olives (about 6)

2 - 3 T black currant jam (or fig or raspberry preserves)

4 t red wine vinegar

4 t olive oil

1/3 t dijon mustard

4 sourdough or whole-grain rolls

8 oz. smoked turkey breast, thinly sliced

4 oz. lowfat provolone, thinly sliced

Roasted red bell pepper -- roast your own or buy a small jar

Red onion, thinly sliced

Tomato, thinly sliced

2 1/2 c shredded lettuce leaves

Finely chop olives and garlic in a food processor or by hand. Stir or process in the next four ingredients with a bit of salt and pepper. Spread onto both sides of rolls. Layer remaining ingredients in roll.

A real New Orleans muffuletta?

First things first: have you tried the postage-stamp framer at bighugelabs.com? It's my favorite new thing. They have a little tool you can use to transform one of your photos into a postmarked stamp, like the one above I took early on a Sunday morning in New Orleans in December. And yes, I'd been to bed the night before -- it wasn't that sort of trip to the Big Easy and I'm not that kind of girl.

Well, yeah I am but that's probably a story for another day. Let's skirt that issue for the time being and turn to the subject at hand, the latest installment in my gastronomical trip to Louisiana. I'm spending the month of July in New Orleans, in mind if not in body.

Today's subject: muffulettas. If I've learned nothing else from this post, it's how to properly spell the word muffuletta. So tricky. So many possible variations. Typing it over and over and over has drilled the correct spelling into my head and I'll no longer have to stumble through online searches for recipes for muffalettas, mufulettas, muffelattas, etc., always coming up empty-handed with a resounding: "No search results found."   

New Orleans boasts two iconic sandwiches: the po'boy (more on those later) and the muffuletta -- pronounced differently according to who you ask: moo-foo-LEHT-tuh (the way the Sicilians would say it) or muffa-LOT-ta (as the locals do). Don't despair though. If you find yourself in New Orleans, you can dodge this pronunciation bullet and just call it a Muff.

A photo I took of a high school band parading through the streets of New Orleans. People came running from all directions to hear them play.

I offer a history lesson for those not in the know on these lovely sandwiches:

Muffuletta began as a type of bread in Sicily, large, round (10 inches across or so), and somewhat flat and similar in appearance to focaccia.

Muffuletta, the sandwich, was created in the early 1900's on Decatur Street in New Orleans at Central Grocery, a small Italian import store with a sandwich counter, owned and operated by the same family since opening in 1906. They've been serving up muffulettas for a hundred years or so. One source I read said the sandwiches were created to feed hungry Sicilians working on the nearby docks. The ingredients in the sandwich can go for many hours without being refrigerated, making it the perfect thing to feed a person throughout a long shift on the docks or -- even better -- a day spent watching Mardi Gras parades or, if you're really lucky, drifting along a parade route on board a float.

To make a muffuletta (the sandwich), a loaf of muffuletta (the bread) is split lengthwise and both sides are smeared with a rich, piquant marinated olive salad, then typically piled with layers of capicola, salami, mortadella, emmenthaler and provolone. The olive salad consists of green and black olives, pickled cauliflower, capers, cocktail onions, pepperoncini, celery, carrot, garlic, basil, oregano, parsley, red wine vinegar and olive oil. It's a bit like having a divine antipasto tray slathered between slices of bread and held in your hot little hands. Variations abound, of course. Sometimes muffulettas are heated through, sometimes served cold. And as you can imagine, where to get the best muffuletta in New Orleans is a topic of heated debate.

A plate of fixin's for my olive salad:

From the top left corner, those are pimento-stuffed green olives, glowing white cocktail onions, pepperoncini, capers, pickled cauliflower, and kalamata olives marinated in wine and herbs.

Deciding which recipe to use for making my own muffuletta was a bit of a daunting task. I sifted through dozens and finally settled on this one. How can you go wrong with a title like "Real N'awlins Muffuletta"? With 52 glowing reviews by other cooks, I looked no further, satisfied by the sight of ringing endorsements such as "Best olive mix ever!" and "I give this recipe five fleur-de-lis's!"

A word of warning at the start: the olive salad needs to marinate at least overnight. Don't you hate it when you're all primed to fix a certain something for dinner only to find those words hidden in the dead center of the instructions? "Marinate overnight." A crushing blow. Not only should the olive salad marinate overnight, but the sandwiches are also better the day after their construction. If you can't control yourself, maybe save a slim slice or two for the next day and see if you agree with me.

My olive salad ready to go in the fridge to  marinate overnight:

The introduction to the recipe wisely points out that one should use oven-fresh Italian bread topped with sesame seeds but I'm afraid no such thing could be found at my small local grocery store. The other day I noticed they've added a "New Orleans" section to the ethnic food aisle. My heart leapt at the sight of it but all it contains are MSG-laden packets of dirty rice mixes and fish fry coatings. Harrumph. I had to settle for a rather spongy loaf of Italian bread -- oblong, not round. It was good but...

I shall have to broaden my search and eventually hunt down a proper loaf of Italian bread.

My finished product:

Buying all those jars of pickled things and meats and cheeses makes this a bit of an expensive recipe to prepare but I venture to say it was well worth the price. Altogether, I probably spent $20 on this (very large) sandwich. I bought the cheese and sliced cold cuts at a deli counter then bought jars of all the olives and things. You end up with lots of leftovers in the jars, meaning you can make even more muffs next week. 

While making these sandwiches, I encouraged my husband to taste a little bit of the olive salad before I spread it on the bread. He took a tentative nibble, did a double-take, made a face and said, "I don't know about that." Before you lose your faith in muffulettas, you should know that he has the palate of a 12-year-old. So a few minutes later when I showed up on the couch toting a plate laden with a hunk of sandwich and he asked where his was, I told him I wrapped up the rest and put it in the fridge.

"But what about me?" he asked.

"You made a negative comment," I said. "So I assumed you wouldn't want any."

Heavy sighing issued forth from him. Then he poutily said, "Fine. Then I'm not having any at all. You can eat the entire thing yourself."

"Cool!"

And so that's how I found myself slowly chipping away at a huge sandwich over the course of a few days. That's a whole lotta muff-a-lotta for one girl to eat but it's been my pleasure.

This would be an excellent party recipe because it's relatively easy to assemble and BIG. Lots of people who reviewed the recipe at allrecipes.com served this at Super Bowl parties. Here's the recipe with a few little changes here and there:

Muffulettas

Makes one large sandwich, enough to feed four. You can go to the recipe online to use their handy-dandy calculator for increasing or decreasing the recipe.

1/2 c pimento-stuffed green olives

1/4 c kalamata olives

1 cloves garlic, minced

2 T pickled cauliflower florets, chopped

1 T capers

1 1/2 t chopped celery

1 1/2 t chopped carrot

1/4 c pepperoncini, drained

2 T marinated cocktail onions

1/4 t celery seed

1/2 t dried oregano

1/2 t dried basil

1/2 t black pepper

2 T red wine vinegar

2 T olive oil (plus more as needed)

2 T canola oil

1 1-pound loaf Italian bread

1/4 lb thinly-sliced Genoa salami

1/4 lb thinly-sliced ham

1/4 lb sliced mortadella

1/4 lb sliced mozzarella

1/4 lb sliced provolone

To make olive salad:

Measure out both kinds of olives and crush them using the bottom of your measuring cup against a cutting board. In a bowl, combine crushed olives, garlic, cauliflower, capers, celery, carrot, pepperoncini, onions, spices, vinegar and oils. Stir together well and transfer to a glass jar, if you have one (I used a glass bowl --you just need something non-reactive). If needed, add more olive oil to cover. Don't be shy with the olive oil. Once spread on the sandwich bread, it soaks in nicely. Cover and refrigerate at least overnight.

To make sandwiches:

I lightly pulsed my olive salad in a food processor to make it a little less chunky. Cut loaf of bread lengthwise and hollow out some of the excess bread to make room for filling (save excess for making bread crumbs to top a casserole or something along those lines). Spread both pieces of bread with equal amounts of olive salad. Layer one half with salami, ham, mortadella, mozzarella, and provolone. Top with other piece of bread and cut into quarters.

You can serve it immediately or wrap tightly and refrigerate for a few hours or a few days to allow the flavors to mingle and the olive salad to soak into the bread.