We took Lynn’s spring break to go to New Orleans. Upon Neva’s excellent suggestion we had muffulettas at Central Grocery. That’s a really good sandwich with a topping of Central Grocery’s olive salad, which is modified giardiniera. When we came how we just had to try our hand at making our own giardinieria. We started with the recipe below and made some modifications as follows.
The recipe we used is based on
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Good recipe for Giardiniera, trying to mimic the experience at Central Grocery, New Orleans
but we didn’t follow it exactly. What follows is what we did, and I’m sure it is open to experimentation and very forgiving.
Ingredients:
* 1/2 head of cauliflower
* half of a large red pepper
* 1 carrot
* 1 stalk of celery
* 1/2 cup salt
* 3 cloves garlic
* 2 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
* pinch red pepper flakes
* 1/2 teaspoon celery salt
* black pepper
* 1 cup white vinegar
* 1 cup Olive oil
* 5-8 oz of pimento-stuffed olives
Steps:
1. cut the cauliflower pepper, carrot, celery into small bite-size pieces and put them in a bowl
2. sprinkle with the 1/2 cup of salt and stir
3. Pour in the enough water to cover the vegetables, and try to get the salt dissolved.
4. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 12 hours.
5. Drain the water and then rinse the vegetables under cold water to remove some of the excess salt.
6. Chop the 4 garlic cloves and mix with 2 1/2 teaspoons of oregano, pinch of pepper flakes, a few grinds of pepper, and 1/2 teaspoon of celery salt
7. pour 1 cup of vinegar over garlic-herb-pepper-etc mixture
8. whisk in 1 cup of olive oil to the vinegar-garlic-herb-pepper-etc mixture
9. pour the olive oil-vinegar-garlic-herb-pepper-etc mixture over the drained and rinsed vegetables.
10. chop the olives and add to the vegetable-olive oil-vinegar-garlic-herb-pepper-etc mixture
11. cover and refrigerate for 48 hours – with the occasional stir
12. Then you’ve got Giardineria that can last for at least a couple of weeks (refigerated)
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