Saturday, April 5, 2008

Basil & Cheese sausage rolls


Sausage Rolls
2kg sausage mince or 50-50 mince meat
2 cups breadcrumbs
2 large onions
4 celery sticks
2 cooking apples
1 large potato (opt.)
1 tbsp mixed herbs
dash pepper
dash garlic salt
1kg pkt puff pastry sheets (6 or 7 sheet pkt)

Place onions, celery, apples and potato in a food processor and mince very fine.
Place in a large bowl with the sausage mince, add breadcrumbs and mix thoroughly.
Cut pastry sheets in half and roll out a bit thinner, place sausage mince on pastry.
Wet it one side and roll into a large sausage. Cut into required lengths and bake in 220c oven for 35min.

That's the basic recipe. I've made these before, so I felt justified in tinkering a little. Not that they aren't very nice on their own mind you. But, you know me. I left out the optional potato, because we didn't have any, and used about 2, maybe 2 1/2 tbsps of chopped basil from a tube, to use it up. I skipped the mixed herbs. Then after mincing the vegetables, I realised I didn't have any breadcrumbs, so I made some with two slices of the bread I baked this morning. Fresh bread isn't ideal for breadcrumbs, but it seems to have worked ok. I also added a cup of grated cheese to the food processor while I was chopping the breadcrumbs, just for a change (and because it was in the fridge). A word of warning too - unless you roll the pastry enough (which is hard if the sheets are still too frozen, and harder if they've thawed to soggy stage) you'll need more than 6 sheets for this recipe. I used 8.

I baked my first trayful for the full 35 minutes, but I thought they were a bit dark, so the next lot came out after 23 minutes, and DP said they were too light. So the next lot I cooked for 28 minutes, and they were just right. This made 72 of varying sizes. We only ate 16 between the four of us for dinner, so the rest are going into the freezer for snack type foods and emergency dinners.

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