Lamb, rosemary and apple sausage rolls

The Free Range Cook, 322pp.
by Annabel Langbein
Octopus Publishing, London, 2010
Cooking on page 32

Annabel and her recipes impressed me when I saw her series on television a couple of years ago. So I was delighted when my friend, Louise, gave me this cookbook for Christmas.

Louise liked the recipes too, so I loaned her the book while we were on our London to Sydney travels. Turned out she bookmarked so many pages that I let her keep mine and bought a new one for myself—a big step for someone who usually buys second-hand!

Annabel introduces this page 32 recipe by saying that you can play around with the flavourings—make a Greek version with olives, garlic, rosemary and feta, or an Italian version with basil, sun-dried tomatoes and garlic. She also says that if you can’t find good sausage meat, buy your favourite sausages, cut them open and squeeze out the contents. That’s what I did.

Lamb, rosemary and apple sausage rolls

Ingredients
400g lean lamb mince
250g coarse pork or beef sausage meat
1 apple, unpeeled, coarsely grated
2 eggs (1 separated)
1 small onion, peeled and coarsely grated
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 tbsp chopped parsley
1/2 tsp chopped rosemary
3 finely chopped sage leaves
1 tsp fruit chutney or tomato sauce
1 tsp salt
ground black pepper
pinch chilli flakes
2 sheets puff pastry

Method
Preheat oven to 200°C and line an oven tray with baking paper.

Place the mince and sausage meat in a large bowl with the grated apple, whole egg and egg white, onion, garlic, herbs, chutney or tomato sauce, salt, pepper and chilli. Mix with large spoon until evenly incorporated.

Place the two pastry sheets on a work surface. Place half  the meat mixture on each pastry sheet, forming a mound the length of the pastry about 6cm in from one edge.

Roll up the pastry to fully enclose the filling. Cut each roll into 3 slices (or up to 6 slices if you want small sausage rolls) and place on the lined baking tray seam side down.

Use a sharp knife to slash 2 or 3 lines across the top of each sausage roll to allow the steam to escape. Make a glaze by mixing the egg yolk with 1 tbsp water. Brush over the pastry.

Bake for 30–35 minutes or until golden brown. Check in the last 10 minutes of cooking and if any liquids have come out of the rolls, soak them up with a paper towel so the pastry stays crisp.

How it played out
As much as I hate grating onions, I was mostly faithful to the recipe. I took Annabel’s advice and bought decent sausages (plain pork and lamb with cannellini beans, parsley and feta) and squeezed out the meat. This gave me a total of 710g of meat to work with, rather than 650g.

I added a teaspoon of fresh thyme (needed to be used), a scant 1/2 teaspoon of salt and a full tablespoon of a feijoa chutney I made the other day. Will post this recipe too.

Whenever I make sausage rolls (which is quite often), I always seem to have more filling than pastry, so I thawed a third sheet and was glad I did.

Verdict
Amazingly delicious sausage rolls, with the nicest filling I’ve ever made. In future, I’ll probably finely chop the apple and onion. Not because I hate grating (which I do), but because it gave off too much liquid, and made the filling too wet and sloppy. I let it drain for 30 minutes before assembling.

This made huge sausage rolls. If you want smaller ones, cut the pastry sheets in half lengthwise, fill along the long edge and roll.

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