Italian Sub Board

All your favorite sandwich ingredients, no assembly time required

The past week has been one of the busiest of my life: I had an enormous book project due and friends are coming to town over the weekend to remember and celebrate a dear friend we lost earlier this year.

With everything that’s going on one thing I definitely couldn’t do this week was cook. (The fact that I even sat down to write this post is a small miracle—though it provided the excuse I needed to give my brain a break from book editing!) So, for the lunches and dinners when my husband and tween were also too busy to take on cooking duty, I leaned into the easiest possible meals: snacking boards.

This board combines all the flavors of a classic Italian sub but doesn’t require getting fresh rolls, going to a deli, or committing to a massive meal. Instead, you just pick up a variety of sliced meats (ideally with a variety of different flavors to mix and match), some cheese (my go-to, which is pretty classic for an Italian sub, is provolone), and crackers and you pile up everything you want to get a nice combination of flavors going on each cracker.

The real key ingredient here is the pickled peppers. Italian subs get a lift from plenty of acidity that usually comes from both pickled peppers and a splash of oil and vinegar dressing. Adding a slice (or half a slice) of mild pickled peppers, like mild banana peppers, gives you that same snappy flavor to balance out the meat and cheese.

Lastly, since a proper Italian sub has some tomato and a tangle of shredded lettuce, I add some cherry tomatoes to nibble on the side—a lot easier and less messy than trying to cut up little tomato slices but equally refreshing. I also decided to add some mozzarella to the mix, and then grabbed some olives, too, so I could make fun little skewers enjoy between bites of meat and cheese. (I also cut up some fruit, because I always want fruit with everything.)

Italian Sub Board

Base Ingredients
2–3 kinds of pork-based cold cuts (salami, mortadella, capicola, pepperoni, and baked ham are the classics)
Sliced provolone (or similar)
Sliced pickled peppers, such as mild banana pepper rings
Mild crackers, such as water crackers (to approximate the flavor of mild Italian rolls)
Cherry tomatoes

Optional Add-Ons
Small balls of mozzarella
Extra-virgin olive oil
Red wine vinegar
Olives (various kinds)
More kinds of crackers
Fruit (I like persimmons for this)

1. Arrange the meats, crackers, and cheese on a plate or board. Put the tomatoes (and the mozzarella, using) in a small bowl. (If you’d like, you can sprinkle the bowl with a little olive oil and vinegar.) Make a small pile or little jar or ramekin of peppers. Add olives and sliced fruit to the plate, if you like.

2. To eat, put some provolone on a cracker and pile on at least two kinds of meat. Top with a bit of pepper. Skewer some tomato, mozzarella, and olives (if using), and nibble for refreshing bites in between the crackers.

*A Note on Presentation: When I did this board mid-week, I obviously just threw these ingredients onto a plate without arranging them to look nice. The key thing was just the flavor, not the way it all looked. That said, the tray above, which I made for myself the day after my deadline—when I was too exhausted to go to the market and make something elaborate, but had more time to just sit and play with my food—only took about 10 minutes to put together. I’ll do it again when family from out of town come over this evening, so that everyone can nibble while I finish making dinner.

Photo: Georgia Freedman