One Pot Pasta - Easy Weeknight Dinner

I heard of this concept from one of my RSS feeds - you put the pasta and sauce all in one pot and everything cooks together. Originally, this was a recipe from Martha Stewart and everyone has put their mark on it. The original Martha recipe used fresh tomatoes and basil, which is nice but you don't always have that. So in my investigation into this topic I found this recipe that uses canned tomatoes. Of course, I had to put my own spin on things - mainly because I thought of using this recipe when I came home from work and in a pasta mood. What I found in my pantry was Mexican style fire-roasted tomatoes. So I decided to do a Mexican take on this dish. I also had some of the Spiced Mexican Pulled Pork left over and thought that would make a nice addition to the originally vegetarian meal.

Some changes - I had spaghetti on hand, not linguine and decided to use the full pound of pasta in the package (who uses 12 oz of pasta anyway? really?) so I upped the liquid amount to 5 cups. Also I used chicken broth I had in the fridge from poaching chicken for my lunch salads. Instead of the fresh basil, I added a good sprinkling of Italian Seasoning. Also, since the tomatoes were "Mexican Style" and had jalapenos in them, I omitted the crushed red pepper.

After cooking at a simmer for 10 min, the pasta was not done. Also the liquid had not been absorbed. So at this point, I added the left over pork and let the mixture simmer, uncovered, until all the liquid was absorbed, probably another 10 min or so. When adjusting for seasoning, I added extra salt and sugar.

Lemme tell you - this was awesome!! You are using the starch from the pasta to your advantage and when the liquid cooks down, you get a creamy sauce without even adding cream or cheese. I had some left over mozzarella that I added at the end, but the dish didn't really need it. I might keep experimenting with this approach - the dish washing hater in me really enjoys that there are minimal dishes with this technique. Also, I have heard that Alton Brown liked to cook his pasta like rice and I like to cook my rice like pasta - this recipe reflects that approach.