Reinventing the wheel: Slow cooked Pork sandwiches

As part of my new food business, I have a stall at one of the Wellington markets.  This means early starts on Saturday mornings.  Not so much of an issue to early-bird me; very much an issue to my night owl husband who, for logistical reasons too dull to go into, takes me down to the market and drops me off with all my stuff, returning later in the day to collect me.  And as much as, when I was signing up for this, I tried to convince him with breezy renditions of "it'll be fiiiiiiiiine", I know that early starts on a Saturday are, for him, in the same level of hell as, say, if I suggested we take one of those free salsa dancing lessons they're offering at the waterfront.  The fact that he never whinges, not once, about all of this just proves what a good'un he really is. 

One of the ways I try to bribe him to stay in his non-complaining state is to treat him to the leftovers of my toils.  I know, right, doesn't sound like much of a treat.  You could be right, up to a point.  One of the products I sell is slow-cooked pork sandwiches with apple sauce.  The pork is cooked slowly overnight, with no other ingredients than water and salt, and it is moreish, melt-in-your mouth delicious.  I can't resell any pork that is left, so I bag it up and freeze it, for use on a day other than Saturday when I can't even look at any more slow-cooked pork.

One of the most successful dishes I've found is a pork chilli.  Converting even sceptic Andy, who is the Chilli Con Carne boss of me, he now prefers pork chilli to the beef he's used to.  I promise to put the recipe up here soon because, truly, it is wonderful.  We've had a run of chilli though, so I was looking for something different to do.  My mind returned to the sandwiches - what if I made them for us but just changed up the additional ingredients, to make it altogether more Italian in flavour?  

And listen, as much as I know that leftover recipes are somewhat limiting for the regular reader, it might help someone out there - I know the words "leftover slow cooked pork" must be one of my top Google searches, so I'm sending this out there because for all I know, you too have bags of pork sitting in your freezer.  And you know what?  These sandwiches are so good, you might want to consider cooking some pork just so you can turn the leftovers into this.  They're that tasty.

Italian Slow Cooked Pork Sandwiches

300g leftover slow cooked pork

1 clove garlic

2 spring onions

Handful of flat leaf parsley, choppe

1 sprig rosemary, chopped

2 sprigs thyme, chopped

Squeeze of lemon juice

Olive Oil

Cheddar

Blue Cheese

2 bread rolls

1 red chilli, chopped

Salad leaves

Preheat the grill.

In a small pan, heat the olive oil and gently fry the garlic and spring onions.  Add the pork, herbs, and a good squeeze of lemon juice.  Cook gently with the lid on until completely heated through, about 10 minutes.

Split the rolls, put one kind of cheese on each side of the rolls.  Pop under the grill to melt the cheese and warm the bread.  

Pile on the salad leaves, top with the pork and finally the chilli.

Keep a napkin to hand for this one folks, it's juicy!

Serves 2