Recipes Meatball and Provolone Subs 5.0 (51) Add your rating & review Neal's Deli serves tender, oversize pork-and-beef meatballs stuffed into a warm hero roll with melted provolone cheese. Although Matt Neal makes his own chunky tomato sauce for the sub, it's fine to substitute six cups of jarred sauce. 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 Updated on February 7, 2023 Print Rate It Share Share Tweet Pin Email Photo: © John Kernick Active Time: 1 hrs Total Time: 1 hrs 30 mins Yield: 8 subs Ingredients Tomato Sauce 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 1 large onion, finely chopped 5 garlic cloves, minced 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper Salt and freshly ground black pepper 1/2 teaspoon dried basil 1/4 teaspoon dried thyme 1/4 teaspoon dried oregano 3 small bay leaves 1/3 cup dry red wine 1/2 teaspoon sugar Two 28-ounce cans diced tomatoes with their liquid, 1 can pureed Subs 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for brushing 1 medium onion, finely chopped 6 large garlic cloves, minced 2 teaspoons dried oregano 1 teaspoon fennel seeds 1/2 teaspoon dried sage 1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper 1 cup plain dried bread crumbs 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese 2 large eggs, lightly beaten 1/3 cup milk 2 teaspoons salt 1/4 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley 1 1/2 pounds ground pork 1 pound ground beef 8 hero rolls, split 3/4 pound thinly sliced provolone cheese Directions In a pot, heat the oil. Add the onion, garlic and crushed red pepper and season with salt and black pepper. Cover and cook over moderate heat, stirring, until the onion is softened, 5 minutes. Add the basil, thyme, oregano and bay leaves and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the wine and sugar and bring to a boil. Cook until most of the wine is evaporated, 3 minutes. Stir in the tomatoes. Cover partially and cook, stirring frequently, until thickened, 30 minutes. Discard the bay leaves. Preheat the oven to 400° and brush 2 rimmed baking sheets with olive oil. In a medium skillet, heat the 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Add the onion, garlic, oregano, fennel seeds, sage and crushed red pepper and cook over low heat, stirring, until the onion is softened, 5 minutes; scrape into a bowl and let cool. Add the bread crumbs to the bowl with the cheese, eggs, milk, salt and parsley. Add the pork and beef and knead gently until combined. Roll the mixture into 32 meatballs, about 2 1/2 inches each, and arrange them on the prepared baking sheets. Bake for 15 minutes, until nearly cooked through, shifting the pans from top to bottom and front to back halfway through baking. Gently fold the meatballs into the tomato sauce. Simmer over moderate heat, covered, until cooked through, about 10 minutes. Wipe off the baking sheets. Set the open rolls on the baking sheets and top both halves with the sliced provolone. Bake for about 5 minutes, until the cheese melts. Spoon the meatballs onto the rolls and top with the sauce. Serve right away. Make Ahead The recipe can be prepared through Step 4 and refrigerated for up to 3 days. Rewarm before finishing the subs. Suggested Pairing Wine or Beer Overthinking what to drink with these subs will detract from simply enjoying them. Have a big fruity Zinfandel or a refreshing beer like Brooklyn Brewery Lager. Rate it Print