Italian Sausage Pasta Sauce

On cold winter nights a warming sausage pasta is a welcome sight.  The key is to buy really good quality sausages.  I buy Italian sausages from my local butcher that are spiced with fennel seeds.  If you can’t find these you can use any old good quality pork sausage.  You could always add a teaspoon of fennel seeds to the sausage meat when it is cooking.

1. Prepare the sausages by making a slit down the length of the sausage and peeling off the sausage skin.  Discard this and then either roughly chop the sausage meat or break it into pieces with your hands.
   
2. Heat the oil in a large casserole sized saucepan.  Add the sausage meat, turn the heat up, and using a wooden spoon poke and prod it to break it up completely while it browns.  This process should take about 5-10 minutes.
   
   
3. Turn the heat down to low, add the chopped onion, crushed garlic, chilli flakes, bay leaves and the chopped rosemary.  Cook for a further 10 minutes over a low heat.
   
4. Add the wine and turn the heat back up to medium.  Cook for approximately 5 minutes, stirring everything together, until the wine has evaporated.
   
5. Add the tinned tomatoes and turn the heat down to low again.  Give the pot another good stir and cook for 40 minutes, stirring every so often.
   
   
6. You could serve the pasta sauce at this stage but I like to make it richer with the addition of the cream and parmesan cheese.
   
7. Remove the bay leaves, add cooked penne pasta or rigatoni or tortiglioni pasta to the sauce, give everything a good stir to coat the pasta in the sauce and serve with more grated parmesan.