Pork & Sausage Ragu

Disclaimer: Not my photo but it's close

I was flipping through a William-Sonoma magazine a few days ago and saw a recipe for a very fancy Pork Loin and Italian Sausage Ragu using a ragu sauce they were marketing. It was expensive! I glanced (literally) at the general ingredients in a few recipes I found on-line. The funny thing was that I had just purchase the pork loin but I had everything else on hand. Here is my simpler but still very tasty version:

1 3-lb pork loin roast trimmed (remove netting)

4 Italian sausages

2 cups beef stock

1 1/2 cups white grape juice (don't use apple juice it's a little too sweet for this)

1 cup tomato paste

1 bay leaf

1 Tbl Italian seasoning

Garlic Salt

Pepper

Wide Egg Noodles

In a large skillet brown the pork loin, remove and brown sausages (you can skip this if you don't care that the meat looks anemic until near the end of cooking) sprinkle with the garlic salt and pepper. If you are skipping this step then place roast and sausages in a large crock pot. Pour stock and grape juice over meat. Season with garlic salt and pepper rotating once. Put in tomato paste and stir until combined - it won't be perfect. Add bay leaf and Italian seasoning. Turn crock pot on to high for six hours. At about hour 5 check that the pork loin is falling apart and taste sauce. Adjust seasonings here. About 20 minutes before serving cook wide egg noodles according to the package directions. While noodles are cooking take sausages out and cut them into bite size pieces, return to crock pot. I took two forks and separated the pork loin into chunks. Drain noodles. Place noodles on plate and top with ragu. Serve with a nice salad with balsamic dressing and sour dough bread. Delicious!