Makeshift muffuletta

After last post's sandwich-related musings the idea of making a muffuletta stuck in my head. I still wasn't going to go out and buy tiny amounts of a dozen ingredients to make a proper one, but maybe I could throw something together with what I had in the fridge.

I've got the suitable bread, of course. I'm a bit light on lunch meats, but some serano ham and salami will suffice. The important bit is the salad. I've got a leftover pickled pepper (stuffed with and ham), some mixed olives, roasted red peppers, capers and half an onion. All that chopped up ought to make a fair approximation. I don't have time to let the flavors meld (as my bread is rapidly going stale) so I used the salty brine from the pepper and olives instead of fresh olive oil in the dressing.



I spooned the dressing over the bread, piled everything up and wrapped it up tight until lunch.




That helped the questionable structural integrity quite a bit and the well-soaked bread softened up a little and took up a lot of flavor. The flavor of the salad's just about right, but the bread's inherent whole grain flavor doesn't really match and I could have used another quarter inch of cold cuts. Still, pretty darn good overall.

OK, maybe this post was more about me wanting to tell somebody about this than your edification. I just think it's neat when I can throw together something fairly complex and fairly palatable out of whatever happens to be on hand.