Recipes Herb-Roasted Pork Subs with Garlicky Spinach 5.0 (3,369) Add your rating & review To create this outstanding sandwich, Matt Neal rubs pork shoulder with an herb-and-garlic mixture and then slow-roasts it for hours ("Forever," he says). He piles the meat high with pickled peppers and spinach sautéed with garlic. One key to the sandwich is to slice the pork very thinly; to do so, be sure the pork is very cold and use a deli slicer or a thin, sharp knife. Slideshow: More Tasty Sandwiches By Matt Neal Matt Neal F&W Star Chef » See All F&W Chef Superstars Restaurants: Neal’s Deli (Carrboro, North Carolina) Experience: Restaurant La Residence, Crook’s Corner (Chapel Hill, NC) Education: North Carolina School of the Arts (Winston-Salem, NC), Savannah College of Art and Design (Savannah, Georgia) What kinds of dishes define you as a chef? Large, slow-cooked, smoked hunks of meat, and other things that take at least a whole day to make, like hot sauce and pickles. Sauté is not my specialty. What recipe are you most famous for?Pastrami biscuits. If you really want to make this dish, you have to plan ahead because you need thick buttermilk biscuits from scratch and you need good smoky pastrami. I make my pastrami myself over a 10-day period. For a week, the pastrami is curing in brine in the fridge. Then I dry it out, smoke it and cool it. I slice it the next day. What was the first thing you ever cooked? The first dish I ever made from scratch was macaroni and cheese. I was in high school and I called my dad [Bill Neal] at the restaurant where he was a chef, Crook’s Corner, and I told him I was thinking of making it. He told me first I had to make a roux. I didn’t even know what a roux was. He walked me through it on the phone, and I made a béchamel, sautéed some onions and eventually baked the macaroni and cheese. It turned out pretty good. Who do you think of as your food mentors? My late father and my wife, Sheila. Sheila, who owns the restaurant with me, went to cooking school, so she’s been formally trained—unlike myself. I lean on her a lot, and any recipe of mine is at least half hers. From my dad, I learned to enjoy life and to enjoy simple things. He was someone who didn’t take shortcuts. He said if you’re going to do it, do it right. Any mundane thing, even slicing onions, should be done correctly. Do you have a favorite cookbook? I’m a sucker for old cookbooks. My favorites include my dad’s Southern Cooking and also his Biscuits, Spoonbread and Sweet Potato Pie. Along those same lines, I love our family friend John Martin Taylor’s Hoppin’ John’s Lowcountry Cooking. When I was young, I also used Chef Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen. What’s your secret-weapon ingredient? Salt. You can pick weeds and turn them into a salad or hunt something and roast it, but if you don’t add salt, it won’t taste like much. What’s your current food obsession? My current obsession is grits, and my go-to lunch is a bowl of them. I’ll throw eggs on the steamer and drop those on the grits, and add onions, hot sauce and bacon bits. I also love roasted brussels sprouts with garlic and hot sauce over grits. What would your ideal restaurant serve? It wouldn’t have any white meat. It would have a lot of dishes that your average American might be squeamish about, like organ meat and crustaceans. Americans are such squeamish little wussies when it comes to food. What ingredient will people will be talking about in five years? In five years, I think people will be talking about how good stuff used to taste. Nostalgia is the ingredient they’ll be talking about. Food & Wine's Editorial Guidelines Published on January 21, 2014 Print Rate It Share Share Tweet Pin Email Photo: © James Ransom Active Time: 45 mins Total Time: 3 hrs 30 mins Yield: 8 Ingredients Pork 12 garlic cloves, thinly sliced 1 1/2 teaspoons chopped rosemary 1 teaspoon dried thyme 1 teaspoon dried oregano 1 teaspoon fennel seeds 1 teaspoon crushed red pepper 1 tablespoon kosher salt 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil One 4-pound boneless pork shoulder roast Subs 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 3 garlic cloves, minced 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper 20 ounces baby spinach Salt 8 hero rolls, split 3/4 pound sliced provolone 1 cup jarred Peppadew peppers or sweet pickled Italian cherry peppers, chopped Directions Preheat the oven to 300°. In a small bowl, combine the garlic with the rosemary, thyme, oregano, fennel seeds, crushed red pepper and salt; stir in the olive oil. Rub the mixture all over the pork. Set the pork in a large, enameled cast-iron casserole and cover with a tight-fitting lid. Roast in the oven for about 2 1/2 hours, turning once, until an instant-read thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the meat registers 180°. Let cool, then wrap the pork in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight. Preheat the oven to 450°. In a large pot, heat the olive oil. Add the garlic and crushed red pepper and cook over high heat until golden, 1 minute. Add the spinach in large handfuls and cook, stirring, until wilted, 3 minutes. Season the spinach with salt and transfer to a colander. Let cool slightly, then squeeze out the excess water. Slice the cold pork very thinly, then let come to room temperature. Arrange the rolls on 2 baking sheets and mound the spinach on the bottom halves; layer the provolone on the top halves. Bake for about 5 minutes, until the cheese is melted. Pile the sliced pork on the rolls and top with the pickled peppers. Close the sandwiches and serve right away. Make Ahead The roasted pork can be refrigerated for up to 3 days before slicing. Suggested Pairing This tender pork calls for a rich red wine with smooth tannins, such as a Washington state Syrah. Rate it Print