It's only sausage roll, but I Iike it.

Welcome to my first blog post of the year, and the story of the most deluxe sausage rolls I've ever made.  I know at least one of my readers, and very possibly more than one has a special affinity with sausage rolls. I've even delivered them to a hospital inpatient to speed recovery. And quite frankly, what's not to love? Unless you're a vegetarian... but even then, you can get some pretty special cheese and onion ones.  But this post is really for the benefit of carnivorous friends.  I made a mahoosive sausage pie for my uncle's wedding (even winning the prize for the best savoury dish in the process) but the traditional Christmas sausage rolls were always made by my Mum.  Now she doesn't cook much, she handed the baton to my daughter two Christmases ago so I hadn't really made actual sausage rolls myself for years.  Then, a friend of my boyfriend had an idea for deluxe, jumbo, pimped sausage rolls with bacon in as well as the sausage meat. The idea developed between her, him and eventually me. And so we came up with a definitive recipe which was cooked for the first time last night.

I used bought puff pastry sheets.  I'm of the opinion that life is too short for certain things,one of them being making your own puff pastry.  I know I CAN do it, because I did it at school.  But not any more. To give you an idea of the jumbo-ness of the finished delicacy, one sheet of pastry made four sausage rolls.  The width of the sheet of pastry was almost exactly twice the length of a sausage, which was super helpful and probably meant to be. I used two sheets, 12 sausages and 16 rashers of streaky bacon. If you're ok at maths, you'll have worked out that I used one and a half sausages-worth of sausage meat and two rashers of bacon in each one.  I skinned the sausages and formed the meat into a bigger sausage, wrapping the bacon around it.  Then two slices of redwood smoked cheddar were added on top.  The block of cheese was also the same as the length of a sausage. Also meant to be. Then the filling was wrapped in the pastry, edges sealed using egg wash (apart from the first one which got forgotten), crimped rather rustically with my fingers and more egg wash brushed all over by my helpful boyfriend/kitchen assistant.  Three slashes in the top, some seasoning and a little bit more grated cheese and voila!

Thirty minutes in the oven and they were browned and crispy. Served with a "chip garnish" (as we had pastry and there weren't that many chips left in the bag!) and broccoli, boyfriend and children agreed that they were a success.  After debating what to call them, "pigs in blankets in duvets" was deemed the best description.

I have no doubt that I'll be making them again, varying the varieties of sausage meat and cheese means the possibilities are almost endless.  You could add chutney or cranberry sauce in the middle, or sprinkle different things on top.  Herbs maybe? Crumbled pork scratchings?They were almost as good cold for lunch the next day too.

Hopefully more blog posts soon too.  Thank you for reading.

Caroline.