Baked Pasta with Pork and Mushrooms

Baked Pasta with Pork and Mushrooms ~ Pan seared seasoned thick-cut pork chops, hearty tomato sauce, and tube pasta baked topped with sautéed mushrooms.Raise your hand if you’re busy.Raise your hand if at the end of a long day of work (I include being a stay at home parent in this term of work-double points to those who work from home with kids around) and you don’t want to cook and ponder over serving cereal or hitting a drive through.

Raise your hand if you are tired and don’t really want to be raising your hand like I’m asking you to do.

See what I did there?

If you’re a regular TCS reader or of any other food blog, you might think we eat like kings every day. We so don’t. I do eat all the food I post here, well not all the desserts, but I do want to eat all of those.

For any number of reasons, I might not get to eat the food on the day I make it. Maybe my light went away and I have to save photography for the next day. Occasionally, I make something that I am going to use up in another way, like a leftover post. There are those days when I don’t actually make dinner, but a dessert or a cocktail (ok, I will have the cocktail for dinner-or lunch, but I still need some kind of food.)Then there are the bad days, when I do get my photography done before my light is gone, but I don’t like how I styled it, how the pictures came out, or whatever little thing my perfectionist-self might be picking at, and I have to reshoot it the following day.

All of these reasons and myriad of others, sometimes my dinner posts just can’t be dinner. When that happens, the last thing I feel like doing at that moment is making an entirely new creative dinner. That’s where cereal, pizza delivery, and scrambled eggs enter the picture. But pizza gets expensive. I actually can’t eat cereal and Elizabeth is hungry again 20 minutes after eating it. And one can only eat so many scrambled eggs.

When things like this happen, I usually turn to my comfort foods, those foods I love from my childhood. These foods usually take little to no effort. I can multi-task while making them. I can sip on a glass of wine will preparing, with no fear I will miss some crucial step.

I’ve said it many times on TCS that red sauce is my go-to comfort food. Pasta makes me happy. Pork is my favorite protein. These are the flavors of my childhood.

Of course I don’t only turn to my comfort foods when a post goes wrong, sometimes I deliberately make them, or at least versions of them. Baked Pasta with Pork and Mushrooms is not a result of a post gone wrong, but the delicious result of busy day turned busy night that deserved a hearty, delicious, home-cooked, comfort food yet quick and easy dinner.

Baked Pasta with Pork and Mushrooms is reminiscent of many of the dinners I enjoyed at my grandmother’s table as a girl. Simple ingredients put together to make something wonderful. With a dish like this, the possibilities are endless. Ragú’s new Homestyle sauces are just that, homestyle; thick, hearty, rich, and vibrant. I’m a self declared sauce queen and I don’t take jarred sauces lightly. When I popped open the Traditional Ragú for this recipe, I was pleased with the thick texture of the sauce. It’s exactly what I wanted. I needed the sauce to cling to both the pasta and the pork.

To cheese or not to cheese was a very real question for me. When in doubt, always cheese. However, I wanted to keep things lighter and sadly, right now I am restricting my daughter’s dairy intake, so no copious and gratuitous cheese pictures today. I simply dusted lightly with finely grated parmesan between layers. If you need cheese, please cheese. Toss in a good cup (or so) of grated mozzarella. I won’t be offended in the slightest and probably will be envious.

I was impressed with Ragu’s new line of Homestyle sauces. I picked up two jars. I made this recipe using Traditional, but I grabbed the meat sauce as well. I have a thing for thick meaty sauces and mozzarella sticks…maybe I should make a post on that some day.

You can check out the 5 flavors in Ragu’s new Homestyle line here and by Homestyle, I mean no artificial flavors, no artificial colors and no high fructose corn syrup, plus each sauce is made with vine-ripened tomatoes, onions and fragrant herbs. If you’re looking for recipe ideas on how to use Ragu sauces, you can find some inspiration on their homepage. What recipe stands out to you?

 

Thank you for sharing!