This past weekend I had the opportunity to demonstrate a couple of recipes at the Southern Food & Beverage Museum in New Orleans. I have lived in Louisiana my entire life, and my husband is even from New Orleans and neither one of us had heard of the museum. I was so very happy that I was asked to visit because it is truly a unique place and how cool is it to say that my book is featured at the Southern Food & Beverage Museum? It’s a bucket list item I didn’t realize I had!
The museum is a nonprofit organization dedicated to celebrating the food culture of the South and while located in New Orleans, there’s a multitude of Southern states represented. I snapped a couple of photos after my demonstration.
Mississippi has the cutest pig.
Arkansas.
And of course, Louisiana.
And all of its hot sauce glory.
My husband pulled me away from Tennessee’s display because he said it looked like I was about to open a Goo Goo Cluster. So unfortunately, that’s when I stopped snapping photos.
There are many, many other states represented and sooooo much more to look at. It’s definitely worth the admittance fee to see it all.
The bonus is that they have events scheduled with chefs and food personalities in their Jenn Air commercial kitchen and you may get samples.
For my samples, I chose to make the Mason Jar Blueberry Cheesecakes and a Muffuletta Dip Recipe. I choose the cheesecakes because of the proximately to the 4th of July, thinking that it might provide some inspiration. I had a couple of people who were less than impressed and thank heavens, I had the Muffuletta Dip to somewhat save the day.
Most of the guests were not from New Orleans (California, Fort Lauderdale, New York, etc) so I’m glad I could share a story about how my version of the famed New Orleans muffuletta got turned into a dip. The recipe makes about 4 cups, y’all, and the crowd of about 10-12 DEVOURED it in a matter of seconds.
The “dip” happened on accident.
Two football seasons ago, I had the bright idea to serve Muffuletta Sliders at a tailgate. If you know anything about Muffulettas, you know that they are messy and that preparing ahead of time can result in soggy sandwiches. No one wants a soggy sandwich.
Because I was going to serve them on slider buns, I chopped all my ingredients and put them into a sealed storage container rather than preparing the sandwiches in advance, with the thought that we would spoon it onto the mini buns once at the party.
But that’s not what happened.
I pulled out the storage container, got distracted with my yapping, and failed to pull out the slider buns.
- 1 cup Italian olive salad, drained
- 1 cup diced salami (about 4 oz.)
- ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
- ¼ cup chopped pepperoncini salad peppers
- 1 (2 ¼ oz.) can sliced black olives, drained
- 4 oz. provolone cheese, diced
- 1 celery rib, finely chopped
- ½ red bell pepper, chopped
- 1 Tbsp. olive oil
- French bread crostini, Melba toast, etc.
- Stir together first 9 ingredients. Cover and chill 1 to 24 hours before serving. Serve with French bread crostini. Store leftovers in refrigerator up to 5 days.
Low and behold, I spotted a friend spooning the muffuletta ingredients onto a Frito chip.
Eating it…..like a dip.
I said, “wait, that’s for the buns! That’s not for Fritos!” to which he said “tastes really, really good on my chip, though”.
I can’t tell you how many times I get asked if I’m bringing the “Muffuletta Dip” to football parties so I thought well, heck, let’s just keep preparing it as a dip instead.
At my Royal Standard signing a lady sort of passed me by, uninterested in the book, but heading toward the dip. I shared the story of how it came to be as I watched her eat not one, not two, not three, but four crostini piled high with Muffuletta Dip. She then purchased two cookbooks.
I’m not saying it’s going to change your world, but I AM saying it has sold me a cookbook or two and you should definitely try it.
Ever have a recipe that ended up being something other than you anticipated?
Leave a Reply