Stacked Muffuletta Salad

Have you ever seen a salad so party-ready as this towering meat-and-cheese-filled number? Layered with all the classic components of a muffuletta sandwich—salami, mortadella, provolone—it’s a feat of engineering and a little bit of a joke. In other words, the perfect centerpiece for a get-together (we love to serve it alongside delivery pizza and lots of wine).

It also tastes just as good as it looks. The highlight is the creamy chopped olive vinaigrette, made of jarred olive salad amped up with Calabrian chile paste, oregano, mayo, and a bit of honey; layered between every slab of crisp iceberg lettuce, it provides enough briny punch to carry the whole dish.

Eating this salad is a mess, and that’s okay! Part of the fun of serving something so tall and theatrical is letting it fall to bits while you chop it up for people. The best move is to plate it in a large, wide shallow bowl that can catch all the pieces as you carve layers off the sides. If you have a different way you’d like to attack it to serve, give it a shot. We stuck a knife or other long implement (like a carving fork or a long skewer) through the center, then cut off pieces from the sides with a serrated knife, letting them fall over in the bowl. You can use kitchen shears to cut up the pieces further if desired.