Potato Pork Casserole

The other day we decided to try something a little different for supper. Since pork chops were on sale, we decided to try a pork dish. We don't typically eat pork all that often. I am not a huge pork fan myself, but if pork chops are cooked tender enough so that they aren't tough and dry, I enjoy them. My mother remembered a simple pork casserole recipe she used to make years ago, which my father found and decided to make. The recipe is simple, just lay out pork chops in a casserole dish, layer them with sliced potatoes, cheese, and pour one can of cream of mushroom soup over top. My father did do a few things differently though. He pre-browned the pork chops, just fr a bit of extra flavor and to ensure they cooked, just five minutes per side. He also used a block of fresh cheese cut up, instead pf just slices. The original recipe serves four and calls for four pork chops, but he cooked six. The recipe turned out quite well, except for the potatoes. I guess they should have been sliced thinner, because after being in the oven for an hour at 325◦F immersed in bubbling sauce with the pork chops, they were still very hard. The pork was cooked perfectly at this point, but not the potatoes. Fifteen more minutes of cooking was only drying out the pork, and doing nothing for the potatoes, so they had to be microwaved separately. However, once together, the dish was quite tasty, and the pork chops were certainly tender and moist. The dish would have been even better with some fried onions and mushrooms added to the sauce. So next time, we will either make the potatoes really thin, or parboil them beforehand.