A Day of Great Food

Yesterday was a great day for food. Now, I'm not talking about food that Angela and I cooked, but food that we found and gobbled up in the French Quarter. Our first stop was the 3rd annual Road Food Festival. The Road Food Fest occupies a stretch of Royal Street in the Quarter, and consists of several local and visiting vendors. We chose to sample the flavors of the visiting Tuscon Tamale Company. Owner Sherry Martin served up a delicious plantain tamale with salsa verde. Check them out - tucsontamalecompany.com.

plantain tamale with salsa verde

The tamale was our pre-lunch snack. For the main event, we walked down Decatur Street to Central Grocery for a muffuletta. In Marie Lupo Tusa's cookbook Marie's Melting Pot, she discusses the origins of the muffeletta sandwich:

One of the most interesting aspects of my father's grocery is his unique creation, the muffuletta sandwich. the mufuletta was created in the early 1900's when the Farmers' Market was in the same area as the grocery. Most of the farmers who sold their produce there were Sicilian. Every day they used to come of my father's grocery for lunch.

They would order some salami, some ham, a piece of cheese, a little olive salad, and either long braided Italian bread or round muffuletta bread. In typical Sicilian fashion they ate everything separately. The farmers used to sit on crates or barrels and try to eat while precariously balancing their small trays covered with food on their knees. My father suggested that it would be easier for the farmers if he cut the bread and put everything on it like a sandwich; even if it was not typical Sicilian fashion. He experimented and found that the ticker, braided Italian bread was too hard to bite but the softer round muffuletta was ideal for his sandwich. In very little time, the farmers came to merely ask for a "muffuletta" for their lunch.

Central Grocery on Decatur Street in New Orleans

enjoying our muffuletta by the river