Add This Italian-Style Topping To Your Salami Sandwich For A Taste Of New Orleans

If you ever want to expand on a basic salami sandwich, it's never a bad choice to first look to New Orleans, a city famous for its vibrant culinary history. However, the best topping isn't necessarily a roux-rich sauce or some fried shrimp, but olive salad, a rich, tangy, vegetable-forward topping that works perfectly with cured salami.

When people think of New Orleans-style cuisine, they often think first of Cajun and Creole spice mixes, French techniques, and classic staples like the po'boy. But the city has never had a shortage of Italian heritage, which eventually gave rise to olive salad, a vital component of its famous muffuletta. While salami is a common ingredient in this sandwich, a dollop of olive salad alone won't make it one. Still, the unique blend of oil, acid, and salt pairs perfectly with the cured fattiness of salami, delivering an almost creamy texture as you bite through the minced drupes.

While it may seem redundant to pair a tangy meat with a tangy condiment, it's much like adding horseradish to a capsaicin-rich cocktail sauce to create two different types of heat. The ingredients work together to deliver multiple nuances of the same type of flavor, making the taste complex but still quite focused. Pair it with some nice bread to soak up the oil, and you've got a dynamite, three-ingredient meal that tastes like it was made by a true expert.

Creating a truly New Orleans-style olive salad takes a bit of time. While some coarsely chopped canned black olives can add flavor to a salami sandwich, picking the right blend, breaking them down just right, and letting them marinate imparts a greater depth of flavor that makes this topping truly special.

For a more comprehensive range of flavors, use a mix of black and green olives. Kalamatas are always a solid choice thanks to the strength of their flavor, but the large black ones at a salad bar work just fine as well. For your greens, Giada De Laurentiis prefers Castelvetranos, a rich, buttery-soft variety that has next to no bitterness. It's also quite common to add all sorts of pickled vegetables, from carrots and garlic to cauliflower and giardiniera blends, so just about anything veggie- and acid-based will do.

A good olive salad doesn't have the paste-like consistency of tapenade, but it should be soft and tender enough to chew through easily. It's best to chop the ingredients by hand, but you can still use a food processor so long as you stick to quick pulses and avoid smushing everything too much. Letting everything marinate together is vital to bringing out the best in this recipe, so let things sit in your fridge for at least a day. Olive salad can last for weeks in the fridge when properly prepared and stored, so feel free to make a big batch and enjoy it over time.