By Paul Briand
Often when I shop for groceries, I have no clue what the meals will be for the coming week.
I simply go up and down the aisles and let inspiration decide. I do a mental calculation of what’s already at home, what we haven’t had in a while, what looks good, what might go together in combination, and what ingredients I’d need to pull it off.
The boneless spare ribs looked particularly good the other day, but my thought process wasn’t to barbeque them as I normally might. I wanted to do something different and I settled on a version of pulled pork involving tomato-based pasta sauce and penne pasta.
Shredded Spare Ribs Over Penne
Ingredients
2 pounds boneless pork spare ribs
24 ounce jar of prepared pasta sauce
16 ounce box of penne pasta
1 green bell pepper
1 medium sweet onion
3 cloves garlic
8 ounces of sliced mushrooms
1/4 cup low-sodium beef stock
Olive oil
Directions
1. Chop the onion and pepper into bite-size pieces and saute with chopped garlic in pan heated to medium high heat with 3 tablespoons of olive oil;
2. Just as the vegetables are getting translucent, transfer them to a large baking dish;
3. In the same pan used for the vegetables, sear the ribs on at least two sides until browned;
4. Remove the ribs to the baking dish and spread among the vegetables;
5. Pour the contents of the jar of pasta sauce evenly over the vegetables and ribs;
6. Use the beef stock to rinse what’s left in the jar and pour that into the mixture;
7. Cover the baking dish with a tight seal of aluminum foil and place in an oven pre-heated to 350 degrees;
8. Bake for an hour then remove from oven and remove foil to use two forks to shred the ribs into small piece of meat;
9. With the foil removed, return the baking dish to the oven and bake another half hour;
10. Remove from the oven and use the forks to shred remaining larger chunks of meat;
11. Spoon a generous helping or two over the penne pasta that’s been cooked to an al dente texture;
12. Top with Italian cheese such as romano or parmesan or mozzarella or, even better, a mixture of your favorites.
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