MINI SAUSAGE ROLLS

I called on a friend recently and she was busy making little sausage rolls for a birthday party.  I hadn’t made sausage rolls for years.

I didn’t realise you could buy sausage meat in France, but then I had never looked for it.  My friend said she finds that it can be a bit coarser than the meat you buy in the UK so she blitzes it in a food processor for sausage rolls and also adds a few bits of veg for flavour.

You can buy packs of ready made puff pastry everywhere in France an in some supermarkets they have the rectangular sheets which are ideal for sausage rolls, better than the circles of pastry which obviously need a lot of trimming,

Only a few days later we were invited to an apéro dînatoire at another friend’s house.  This is like being invited round for drinks but with extra nibbles, or, as this other friend put it, more than just a crisp.  In fact there is usually enough food to be sufficiently fed for the evening, all tasty finger food and lots of it home made.  So I decided to make a batch of mini sausage rolls to take with me.  They were delicious and disappeared fast, all forty of them!

I added some onion, tomato and red pepper to my sausage meat which everyone seemed to love.  Next time I might experiment with some other flavourings, paprika, curry powder or whatever takes my fancy on the day.

For another guide on making mini sausage rolls see the BBC Good Food website here.

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For scary sausage rolls for a Halloween party use the recipe and guide below but instead of folding the join under the rolls fan it out  and slash it to form ghouls and poke holes for the eyes and mouth.  A peppercorn can go in the mouth before baking and a dab of ketchup in the holes for the eyes afterwards.

For the mummy sausage rolls, wrap thin strips of pastry around either small chipolatas or frankfurters and put dabs of mustard for the eyes.  I used half a thin frankfurter with the rounded uncut end at the head.

(I later modified the design by using peppercorns for the eyes and mouth of the ghouls (red for the eyes, black for the mouth) and mustard seeds for the eyes of the mummies.)

Ingredients

2 packs of feuilletée rectangulaire (oblong ready rolled puff pastry)

500g pork sausage meat

1 egg, beaten

1 tomato

1 small onion

½ a red pepper

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 180°fan / gas mk 6.  Line two baking sheets with baking parchment.

Put the vegetables into a food processor and blitz briefly to chop finely.  Add the sausage meat and blitz again until smooth.

Unroll one sheet of pastry and cut lenghtwise along the centre to make two long strips.  Divide the meat into four equal parts and spoon one part along one strip of pastry to make an even sausage about an inch inside the edge.  Brush the opposite long edge with beaten egg.

Fold the nearest pastry over the meat and roll the whole thing towards the opposite edge so that a long sausage roll is formed and the join in the pastry is underneath.

Cut the roll into ten roughly equal sections, prick the tops with a fork or slash with a knife, brush liberally with egg and place slightly apart on the baking sheet.  Repeat with the other half of the pastry.

Bake for 25-30 minutes until the pastry is crisp and brown and the meat is cooked.  While the first batch is baking make the second batch.

Remove to a wire rack to cool. 

Makes 40 mini rolls.