This weekend, we slightly overdid it when cooking a Sunday morning fry-up for some friends we had to stay. We were left with two sausages and a rasher of bacon that on another day I might just have chucked in the bin. However, I ended up shoving them in the fridge and today set about trying to make good use of them.

After a bit of thought and a quick raid of the food cupboard, I ended up creating something pretty tasty! Here’s a quick, easy, and cheap recipe for a pasta sauce that makes use of any leftovers you have kicking around your fridge.

I browned an onion, two cloves of garlic, and a sliced red pepper in some oil. I then added some halved cherry tomatoes and let it all soften before adding the sausage and bacon.

After stirring everything around for a couple of minutes, I added a whole jar of passata and four sprigs of rosemary. On a whim, I also chucked in half a can of sweetcorn, which introduced a nice change of texture and some sweetness.

I brought the whole thing to the boil and then reduced it down to a simmer for around half an hour.

I had cut the sausage really finely so that the sauce was more of a ragu than a pasta sauce with lumps of sausage in. The result was a pasta sauce with a pork flavour rather than lots of identifiable chunks of sausage.

The bacon added a smoky dimension that was really rather nice. The rosemary really brought out the existing flavours already going on in the sauce and the smell was amazing!

I served the sauce simply over some penne pasta with a hefty dose of parmesan on top and it was a real hit. I’m so glad those sausages didn’t end up in the bin yesterday morning!