Fra Diavolo Sauce With Pasta and Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

Hi all!

I'm very sorry for being M.I.A. lately. I have had a lot going on lately, but I finally managed to put some time aside to make pasta and pulled pork.

Fra Diavolo Sauce with Pasta (click here for the recipe from Food Network Canada)

My modifications:

- I did not add oil while cooking the pasta, and so I only used a total of 1 tablespoon for this recipe.

- I added 1/2 teaspoon of Italian seasoning, a splash of brandy, a dash of garlic powder, a dash of ground black pepper, 1/2 teaspoon of brown sugar, 1 chopped fresh basil leaf and 1 tsp of minced garlic while sauteeing the seafood. I served with some grated Parmesan.

- I don't like my pasta too chunky, so I pureed the tomatoes.

My thoughts:

- I don't think adding that tablespoon while cooking the pasta would have helped the flavour in any way, so why add the extra calories?

- All the extra seasonings/herbs/condiments I added were necessary, I felt. With these modifications, I thought this dish was just okay. Without them, I would imagine the dish would be quite bland.

- I felt it needed a deeper cheese flavour like Asiago or mozzarella. I didn't have these on hand, otherwise I would've added them.

- I only had frozen cooked shrimp. Uncooked shrimp would have definitely given better results, as all the flavours would have penetrated the shrimp better than the cooked variety.

- Overall, a mediocre dish. I think more oil is needed, not while cooking the pasta, but to saute the seafood. Cheese and more seasonings/herbs are definitely needed.

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork (click here for the original recipe from All Recipes) 

My thoughts:

Okay, I made one huge mistake. I cooked the pork (I used pork butt instead of tenderloin) in both the root beer and BBQ sauce, instead of cooking it in the root bear and adding the BBQ sauce at the end, as per the recipe's instructions. The result? An overly-sweet sauce. I attempted to rectify this by dumping another half a bottle of BBQ sauce, but the dish could not be salvaged. (My guests said they enjoyed this dish, but declined in taking home leftovers.)

 

Would I make this again? Possibly, but I would definitely scale this down a lot; for even 5 guests, this yieldd a lot of food. And, of course, I would definitely make sure to add the BBQ sauce at the end!