Made with Bray Cured charcuterie on James Martin's Saturday Morning
A muffaletta sandwich is a classic New Orleans sandwich created by Sicilian immigrants who brought the traditional round Italian sesame muffuletta bread to the States. It's a delicious savoury combination of meat, cheese and vegetables.
We recently chatted with James Martin about our brilliant charcuterie. On James Martin's Saturday Morning on ITV, James made a British take on the muffaletta using our charcuterie.
The great thing about a Muffaletta is that as long as you've got some charcuterie, cheese, grilled veg and any savoury spread like a pesto or tapenade you really can freestyle it however you wish.
Ingredients
- 1 sourdough boule, approx. 10" (25cm) across
- 2 heaped tablespoons pesto or black olive tapenade
- 12 slices of each of 3 different charcuterie meats Buy our muffaletta meats pack >
- 1 whole mozzarella, sliced
- 1 jar of mixed grilled vegetables, drained and patted dry with kitchen towel
Preparation time
20 minutes to prepare, then 1 hour in the fridge, and an optional 5 minutes of frying.
Variations
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Bread: If you can't find a sourdough boule, any good quality white round crusty loaf will do the trick. When we sell muffaletta at our charcuterie and coffee shop in Bray, Berkshire, we use focaccia.
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Cheese: Try provolone, or a mix of mozzarella of provolone.
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Vegetables: Add your favourite mix of mediterranean grilled vegetables. Either bought jarred or grilled at home. Just be sure to drain off any excess oil or vinegar so your sandwich isn't too wet. If it's too wet, it won't hold together. We also love this recipe with capers and grilled mushrooms.
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Order of assembly: In this recipe, we put the pesto or tapenade on the outside, of the meat, against the bread. This is great for helping everything stick. But if you're making the recipe ahead, and you don't want the bread to go soggy, layer the meat directly against the bread to create a moisture barrier.
Instructions
- Cut the top off the bread loaf, like you would a pumpkin. Leaving a big opening with room to get your hands in to assemble the sandwich.
- Use your hands to hollow out the loaf. Pull out the soft bread from the centre, leaving enough thickness next to the crust to keep the strength and shape of the loaf. About 3/4" (2cm) should be enough. To avoid waste, you can allow the bread you've dug out to dry out a little then blend it into crumbs and store in the freezer for future use.
- Spread the pesto or tapenade into the bottom of the hollowed out hole.
- Layer in half the cured meats, covering base of the hole.
- Layer in half of the grilled vegetables.
- Layer in all of the mozarella.
- Add the remaining grilled vegetables followed by the remaining cured meats. The filling should now just be mounding up out of the hole.
- Firmly press everything down, being careful not to split the bread. The filling needs to be nice of compressed to stay together when you've cut it.
- Press the top back onto the filled loaf.
- Refrigerate the whole filled loaf for an hour.
- Cut in half top to bottom so you can see the beautiful layers inside. Serve cold in slices on a plate with a knife and fork alongside a dressed side salad, or make like James Martin and first fry lightly for a few minutes on each side for delicious crunchy fried bread and melted cheese.
In pictures
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