Things to put on pasta!

My most recent cooking exploits have focused on making sauce-like substances to put on the cheap and delicious ravioli I recently bought at Trader Joes (sorry for all of you who are living in Europe and unable to use this resource).

I decided that a good thing to do would be to take some Italian sausage and cook it up with onions and garlic and mushrooms. This worked very nicely. As a variation in order to use up the rest of the sausage I put some green pepper and fresh tomato in as well to make it more resemble a conventional pasta sauce. I used a random pepper that wasn't a bell pepper since I don't like bell peppers.

I guess some preparation directives are probably in order here:
Start by putting the sausages (removed from their skins) in a largish frying pan no cooking oil is necessary. Break up the meat with your stirring implement. Once there is enough grease in the pan to be getting on with put in onions and garlic and green pepper (half an onion and a clove or two are enough to go with 2 sausages). Don't worry about things sticking to the bottom of the pan. Once things look slightly golden brown around the edges, pour a little water into the pan and scrape up the stuck bits, boil out the water and add mushrooms. You might want to do the deglazing ritual again. Add your tomatoes (peeled if you don't like random bits of tomato skin in your sauce) and let them cook down and make this creation more or less sauce-like. Solid pieces of tomato are fine though.

The most important part is addition of herbs and spices though. While you are frying add various herbs from the obvious (basil, oregano, black pepper) to the less (thyme and sage). Make sure to put some red pepper flakes or cayenne or something like that in too (if you like things to be slightly spicy).

You can make this is quantity and keep it around for all your pasta sauce needs.