I dislike olives. Actually, I despise them. They taste like dirty salt. Maybe I could get my head around them if they had a different texture, like a cracker. Something like salt and vinegar chips. But instead, they’re squishy and slimy. Ugh. Everyone has that one food that they just can’t eat, and olives are mine. Pass me some mushrooms, or some anchovy paste, or pineapple on pizza. Just please keep olives away from me. Because I dislike olives so much, everyone who heard about the project told me to make something with olives. Facing your fears! Challenging yourself! Whatever. At first, I said no chance. But since this is a project where I literally am trying to challenge myself, I suppose they had a point.

That makes two things about this particular dish very different from the rest: I am actively working with something I dislike, and I am selecting a country that I’ve been to. A country where I’ve lived my entire life, even. However, cuisine in the U.S. is fascinating. Texas and Massachusetts might as well be different countries from a culinary standpoint. As I was brainstorming at the start of this project, cooking something from the south became an immediate goal. I opted to find a recipe from Louisiana, as I’m interested in the Cajun and Creole influences in the southern part of the state, and that’s when I found a sandwich with an olive salad: the muffuletta.

The sandwich was loaded with deli meats and cheeses, and it was different from something I’d normally make. I’m not a huge sandwich gal, except for meatball subs. Based on a recipe from Southern Living, the sandwich calls for salami, ham, pastrami, provolone, and swiss. This was all topped with the dreaded olive salad and a pepperoncini pepper. Though the original recipe used a large sesame loaf, about the size of a wheel of cheese, I opted for smaller sesame sub loafs for my smaller portion. At the store, I sprung a bit on Genoa salami, but everything else was super affordable.

Olive salad was the first step. It required mixed pickled vegetables, purple onion, and herbs like parsley and oregano. The recipe I followed (also from Southern Living) added strong flavors, like capers and roasted red peppers. However, since the quantity of each of these ingredients was so small, I skipped both and focused on the veggies, olives, and seasoning. Making the sandwich was the easiest recipe thus far; I stacked the meat and cheese on one side and spread the olive mixture on the other. After smashing the two halves together, I wrapped the entire sandwich in aluminum foil and threw it into the oven. The heat would help the cheese melt over the layers of deli meat in the sandwich. I waited about 20 minutes until the cheese was ooey and gooey. I topped the sandwich with some Frank’s hot sauce and braced myself.

The first bite was delicious, and intentionally devoid of olives. I was working up to it. The pastrami made up the bulk of the meaty flavor, followed by the sharp salami and sweeter ham. The provolone and swiss were perfectly balanced. I had a vinegary note from the runoff of the olive salad. The heat from the hot sauce was the perfect finishing touch. However, I knew that to genuinely claim that I have tried the muffuletta, I needed a bite with olive salad. I went in for my second full bite.

Ugh. Olives. If you like them, you won’t understand, but if you dislike them, you know where I’m coming from. They taste grimy to me. My second bite was far less enjoyable than the first. I could still taste the meaty pastrami, the bitter swiss, and the pickled vegetables, but the briny, salty olive overpowered each of the welcome flavors. I chewed sadly, wondering how on earth I was going to finish this sandwich.

Bite by bite, I got used to the olive flavor. I didn’t like it, but since it was expected, it didn’t jar me the way my first olive salad bite had. I started thinking about Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking, in which she argues that the best-tasting dishes have a balance of all four. The cheese made up a good portion of the fat. The heat came from the peppery notes of salami and the dabs of hot sauce throughout the sandwich. Salt was throughout the meat and olive salad. And then, I suppose, I need to give the olive salad sole credit for the acid. The acidity cut the fat of the dripping cheese and helped to balance the salt level. I suppose that without the olives, the sandwich would be overpowering in the remaining three elements.

It’s no surprise that this meal came from New Orleans, which boasts some of the best cuisine in the world. However, I was surprised to discover that this sandwich has a Sicilian origin rather than a French one. The first muffuletta came from The Central Grocery in the French Quarter, according to What’s Cooking America’s retelling of the history (the site also said to never heat the sandwich; it seems Southern Living led me astray!). It was a sandwich made up of common purchases from Sicilian immigrants in the early 1900s. Most of the farmers would buy pastrami, ham, salami, cheese, and olives to eat separately, which is more akin to the Italian way of eating. The owner of The Central Grocery put the elements on a sandwich and called it a muffuletta.

I thought about what it must have been like in that time to move to a brand new country across the ocean. I don't know that I could ever take a risk like that; I honestly think I could barely move to the west coast. How challenging and tiring it must be to not only be away from friends and family, but to be in a brand new country, culture, and environment. So how wonderful it must be to form a community of people who have come from the same place with similar experiences. Food is a bond that strengthens those communities. It allows people to be giving, and be comforted by familiar tastes. New Orleans is full of these small cultural pockets, which have existed ever since the first ships came over. Pretty much all of them were created around sharing food.

I’ve been to New Orleans once, and I ate well when I was there. Still, my exposure to the food was a little touristy. Beignets and chicory coffee from Cafe Du Monde, gumbo with andouille sausage, shrimp and grits while sipping a Sazerac. Learning about and making a New Orleans meal without any French, American Southern, or creole influences showed me how much there is to this historic city. This sandwich was both Sicilian and Cajun, a combination that I didn’t think possible. I think that's the point of this country: letting people from all over the world find a better life, thus creating more diverse combinations of people. I hope to return some time in the future to uncover more about this diverse cuisine, and to explore each pocket of culture that served as a community for brand new Americans.