Slow Cooked Sausage & Pepper Pasta Sauce

Ingredients

• 8 Italian-style pork sausages
• pasta of choice, to serve
• 3 peppers, mixed colours, deseeded and sliced into strips
• 0.5 tsp fennel seeds
• 1 large red onion, thinly sliced
• 5 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
• 1 tsp chilli flakes
• 1.5 tsp dried oregano
• 150 ml red wine
• 700 g passata
• 1 tsp caster sugar
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 bay leaves
• 10 fresh basil leaves, torn
• parmesan, grated, to serve
• Crusty ciabatta, to serve

Method

1. Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a large, wide casserole or deep-sided frying pan over medium-high heat. Pat the sausages dry and season them with a pinch of salt — water means steam, and steam means no browning. Add them whole, in a single layer with space between each one. Don't crowd the pan; if it looks tight, do them in two batches. Brown for around 8 minutes, turning every couple of minutes, until they've got a deep mahogany crust all the way round. Lift them out and slice each one diagonally into 4–5 thick chunks.
2. Add the remaining olive oil to the same pan — leave the brown stuck bits where they are, that's flavour. Tip in the peppers and red onion with a good pinch of salt. Cook over medium-high heat for 10–12 minutes, stirring every few minutes, until the peppers have collapsed and the edges are catching and caramelising. You want colour, not just softness.
3. Add the garlic, fennel seeds, chilli flakes, and dried oregano. Stir and cook for 30–60 seconds, just until the spices smell fragrant and toasty and the garlic turns pale gold — don't let it go further or it turns bitter and takes the whole sauce with it. Bloomed spices taste of themselves; raw ones taste dusty.
4. Pour in the red wine and let it bubble hard for 3 minutes, scraping the base of the pan with a wooden spoon to lift every bit of fond into the sauce. It should reduce by half and smell rich rather than sharp.
5. Pour in the passata, then the rinsed lentils, the water, sugar, and bay leaves. The water and wine here are doing the real work — passata on its own simmers down to something that tastes of heated tin, but with liquid behind it the tomatoes break open and turn fruity. Stir well, then nestle the sausage chunks back into the sauce.
6. Bring to a gentle simmer and drop the heat to low. Cook uncovered for 30–35 minutes, stirring every so often, until the sauce is thick and glossy, the lentils have melted in, and the sausages are giving up their fat. If it tightens too far, splash in more water — you're after a sauce that coats a spoon, not a paste.
7. Fish out the bay leaves and stir through most of the torn basil. Taste, season, taste again — adjust the salt and chilli now, not at the table. Meanwhile, salt the pasta water generously; it should taste like the sea. Cook the rigatoni until al dente, drain (saving a mugful of the water), and toss through enough sauce to coat every tube generously, loosening with a splash of pasta water if it needs it.
8. Pile the pasta into warm bowls, spoon over any extra sauce, scatter the remaining torn basil, shower with grated parmesan, and finish with a pinch more chilli flakes for anyone who wants the heat.