Today is the start of National Pic-Nic Week and for once the weather looks perfect for it. I made sausage rolls for my first family (socially distancing) pic-nic with my son Zach’s family yesterday. It was agony taking them out of the oven and allowing them to cool before slicing, fearing that I wouldn’t be able to stop myself wolfing them down. This is my quick way of making sausage rolls by improving decent butcher’s sausages with herbs, lemon zest and juice. I usually cheat with bought puff pastry but was forced into making my own (very buttery) short crust.
Serves 4
Prep: 25 min
Cook: 30 min
125g spring onions
4 rashers pancetta
1 small unwaxed lemon
1 tsp vegetable oil
1 tsp chopped thyme leaves
1 tsp chopped sage leaves
1 tbsp finely chopped flat leaf parsley
400g butcher`s pork sausages
320g ready-rolled puff pastry
flour for dusting
1 beaten egg
Heat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6. Finely slice the spring onions. Chop the pancetta into small scraps. Remove 1 tbsp fine lemon zest. Quickly stir-fry the pancetta in most of the oil. Add spring onions, zest and herbs. Stir-fry until the onion is wilted. Spread in a mixing bowl to cool. Run a sharp knife down the sausages and remove the sausage meat to the bowl. Add 1 tbsp lemon juice, season generously with pepper and lightly with salt. Mix and mulch. Form into 4 thick sausages, approximately 10cm long. Cut the pastry into four equal pieces. Dust a work surface with flour and roll into 11x15cm pieces. Paint with egg. Place a sausage at the beginning of the strip. Roll forward to enclose, making a generously overlapping join underneath (puff pastry always shrinks as it cooks). Arrange on an oiled, parchment-lined baking sheet. Make 4 or 5 diagonal slashes then paint with beaten egg. Bake for 30 minutes or until puffed and golden. Trim the ends and cut in half. Serve with a pot of your favourite mustard.