Cherry's Christmas Kitchen Cooking - Part One

I found, what I thought, was a super recipe for homemade sausage rolls in a copy of Easy Living magazine. The recipe was by Jamie, whose cooking I love and adore, but as LBH, his mum and I began to put the recipe together this past Saturday we found ourselves going 'off piste' and making our own recipe up. I think this is a good thing to do and something that I think Mr Oliver would encourage. He wants us to be in the kitchen, cooking up delicious homemade treats for our family to eat and not popping down to the local freezer to buy sausage rolls that contain all sorts of nasties and, lets be honest, look like a cat's bottom if you eat them side on!

The one thing we noticed, well LBH's mum noticed, was that after cooking these delicious morsels, there was almost no fat swilling about in the baking tray. I've never had that with shop bought sausage rolls. Bleugh!

Cherry's Version of Jamie's Sausage Rolls

Makes 60 (bite sized)

Chop 1 red onion into very small pieces and soften down in a pan, on a low heat and with a little olive oil for about 15 mins. While you're doing this squeeze the meat out from 1 packet of 6 chunky sausages into a mixing bowl (weight of packet is usually 400 grams). I used Duchy's pork sausages you can see a picture of the exact type I used right here. It is very important to me to use free range / organic pork. The pork industry has been overlooked in the past but I do not want to eat an animal that has been stuck in a concrete pen for all of it's life. Besides, the meat it produces would taste of nothing but unhappiness.

Once you have the sausage meat in the bowl, discard the skins and add to the bowl - 1 teaspoon of ground fennel seeds ( buy the seeds whole but grind them yourself using pestle and mortar), 5 fresh sage leaves (chopped using kitchen scissors into tiny pieces over the bowl), 1 large pinch of ground nutmeg, 20g of white breadcrumbs and 1 large free range/organic egg. Allow the onion to cool slightly before putting into the bowl with the rest of the ingredients. Mix the whole lot together using your hands. Yes it squelches and makes a funny noise but you have to get each and every ingredient mixed well together and bound up. You don't want huge amounts of onion residing in one tiny sausage roll!

Set the bowl to one side.

Take 1 packet of good quality shop bought puff pastry - 500g ( you'll need two and half packets in total). Cut one block in half and place one half on a clean, lightly floured surface. Work quickly, keeping the pastry as cool as possible. Roll the half block out until you have a long rectangular shape that is about the thickness of a dinner plate. Cut that piece length ways until you have two, snakelike strips of pastry. Place sausage meat all along the middle of one length of pastry, ensuring that you don't overload the strip or the meat may squelch out while cooking, be sensible with the amount you put in. When you have done that brush the other strip with beaten egg and place that strip over the top of the strip holding the sausage meat. Wrap it carefully around the meat, sealing it with a fork and manipulating the pastry at the ends so that it is all contained in a neat little, long parcel.

Paint the outside of the long parcel with beaten egg and sprinkle with poppy seeds or sesame seeds. It should look like this.......

Using a sharp, medium sized knife, slice the pastry snake into pieces that are slightly bigger than bite sized and place them on a baking tray in a hot oven ( 200 degrees c) for between 25 and 27 mins, keep an eye on them.

If you want to freeze them for your Christmas Day Supper (as I am) do as Jamie says and place them in the freezer, uncooked, while on a baking tray. Once frozen you can transfer them to a freezer bag while and they will retain their shape. Defrost thoroughly before cooking, mind you!

Enjoy, we did. In fact, I had to make an extra batch on Saturday as our 'tasting' batch seemed to disappear! Hmmmmm, Christmas!

Comments

[Jenny]

To Dawn, the fennel seeds are perfectly appropriate, they add a lovely sweetness to the pork filling.

[Nicola]

I love your blog, you make the most delicious recipes! Your sausage rolls look really good, I love homemade food, it tastes so much better than anything shop bought!

[Freya]

A lovely variation, perfect for Christmas!

[Dawn]

Look quite yummie, but I'm not sure about the fennel seeds though... Cheers, I'm off to the kitchen now!

[Jayne]

Mmmmm - they look really good! We are lucky in that around the corner from us there is a smallholding with free range outdoor pigs who sell sausages, bacon etc - the pigs are right outside the shop so zero food miles too!

[Sarah Raad]

mm! I don't like pork sausages but I agree with all you have said as ever! and I think jamie does want us to adapt his recipes, it's all part of the fun! perhaps I might try them with beef sausages? our local butcher sells lovely aberdeen angus ones. would have to play with the seasoning, maybe thyme instead of sage, perhaps a hint of chill? yum!

[Rowan]

These sound really good, I get my sausages from Chatsworth Farm Shop and they are really good - oh, dear, that means I shall have to go there yet again.........

[Victoria]

These look fabulous and I'm going to give them a go this w/end!

I'll let you know how i get on

Thank you

Victoria

[Antoinette]

Right! I'm inspired. Am definitely going to give this one a go. The fennel and sage would be delish in this. I always cook with organic meat - it has a much better flavour, and of course doesn't have the nasty cocktail of hormones, chemicals and - as you so rightly put it - unhappiness.

Thanks for sharing this.

[Joanna]

I love this post ... the horrible pork tasting of unhappiness ... the cooking together ... the getting ahead for Christmas ... the fact that what you are producing is so very much better than anything you could buy, and that there's no fat swilling about in the bottom of the tray.

My blog is low-saturates, because my husband had a heart attack, and we almost never eat sausages any more (sigh) ... but this is a Christmas treat we all deserve

Thanks!

Joanna