Baked Fusilli with Sausage & Portobello Mushrooms (Parental Advisory: Coarse Recipe Language Used)

I was productive today.

For lunch, I made the Hunger Games Lamb & Dried Plum Stew, which turned out pretty well. So of course, at 10pm, I felt like second course. Or should I say... coarse. Read on.

Coarsely Baked Pasta Goodness:

3 tbsp. butter (or more... I'm bad with butter)
6 Portobello Mushrooms, chopped coarsely into cubes about 1cm (Sobeys had a sale - plus they're local!)
3-4 shallots, chopped or sliced coarsely
6 dinner sausages (I used Bratwurst. That's Italian, right?)
coarsely ground black pepper
"italian seasoning"
1 big clove garlic, chopped or sliced coarsely
2 cups fusilli (or other fun-to-bake pasta, like bowties or penne)
handful of fresh basil, chopped (you guessed it) coarsely
Fresh tomatoes, sliced (I used about 8 smaller Campari ones)
olive oil

Oven to 400F

Start by choppin' up your portobellos in a very coarse manner. Like, see how UNcubelike you can make them. (See, whenever I'm doing a baked dinner dish, I feel the need to chop things coarsely. If I'm frying, I like to grate or slice finely. Don't know why.) Season with coarse language. Chop up your shallots too. Coarsely. Put a bigass frying pan on the stove and melt a tbsp of the butter. Once that's up to about medium-high heat, throw the onions in. Let 'em get a little see-through (man, this recipe just gets more inappropriate...) and then let the mushrooms join them.

Important here - don't throw all the mushrooms in at one go. Six portobellos is a LOT of mushroom, and they do shrink and sweat, but they cook much better if you do 'em in batches so they're not crowding each other.

Get a bigass bowl to mix all your non-pasta ingredients in. Once all the mushrooms are done, throw them in the bowl and let them wait for the sausages to join the taste orgy. And don't throw away the juices - you want that liquid.

Putting water on to boil for your pasta at this point is a good plan, but keep in mind that the pasta does NOT need to be cooked the whole way, because you're baking it. Al dente at the farthest point. So don't start the pasta until about halfway through the sausages.

Speaking of them, skin the sausages. Easiest to just make a single line with a very sharp knife, then undress them like you're um, peeling a banana. Throw them in the medium-high hot bigass pan and break them up with a spatula until they're like ground meat - bite-sized for your dining convenience. Throw in the coarsely chopped garlic to keep them company. I added a little black pepper and "italian seasoning" (so mysterious) to them too. Keep tossing them around until they're good and brown, and the garlic's soft, then remove from pan to join the mushrooms and onions.

Once your mix is all together, throw the basil in and toss it all up. Let that sit and explore its inner gustatory beauty while you drain your pasta and ready some casserole dishes. First layer, pasta. Second layer, sausage mix. Third layer, use the slices of the tomatoes to create a fancyshmancy top to your pasta, then drizzle the whole damn thing with some tasty olive oil.

Throw in the oven and check after 15 min. Or, conversely, you can decide to broil it like I did and forget it's in there, and have an overly-caramelized top to your pasta. So trust me when I say, USE CAUTION with broiling. It does NOT take very long.

Pictures to come... maybe.