Pasta with Cacciatore Sausage & Roast Tomato Sauce

This is possibly my favourite pasta sauce and is dead simple to make. I got the idea of a roast tomato sauce from Stephanie Alexander's legendary cookbook, The Cook's Companion. You can leave out the sausage and use the base sauce with any number of meats, particularly seafood. Roasting the sauce gives a slightly sweet caramelised effect.

Serves 4

Ingredients
500g freshly cooked pasta
2 large or 4 small cacciatore sausages (I prefer the hot variety) diced into small pieces
10 roma tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 medium spanish onion, roughly chopped
1 medium brown onion, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
60ml extra virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon olive oil
2 fresh bay leaves
1/4 cup finely chopped flat leaf parsley
pinch of salt & pepper to taste
Freshly grated parmesan cheese to serve

Method
1. Pre-heat fan forced oven to 180C
2. Place tomatoes, onion, garlic, bay leaves, and extra virgin olive oil in a large baking dish, mix very well by hand, and roast for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and mix ingredients thoroughly then cook for a further 25 minutes. Meanwhile, fry the diced sausage for 5-8 minutes over a medium high heat in the olive oil, then transfer with slotted spoon to absorbent paper to drain the remaining fat.
3. When the tomato sauce has finished cooking, remove bay leaves and mix in thoroughly the sausage, parsley and the pasta.

Serve with the grated parmesan and ideally a light Italian red wine.