The Christmas Sausage Roll …
I don’t know about you, but sausage rolls are big in this house, especially at Christmas time. They also feature at my two sons birthday’s, but with a slightly different recipe…
Sausage rolls are one of the most popular snack in the United Kingdom. The simple idea of wrapping meat / fish / vegetables in pastry can be traced back to the Classical Greek & the Roman eras. These day’s the modern sausage roll consist of minced meat encapsulated in puff pastry, this recipe has been traced back to the beginning of the 19th century in France, [obviously!] Early versions of the roll made with pork as the filling became popular in London during the Napoleonic Wars & of course it then became identified as an English dish.
This tasty easy to eat snack grew in popularity in London in the early 1800's as cheap street food, and became known as a quintessentially British snack, originally made using shortcrust pastry, I still occasionally do them in short pastry depending on what mix I use for the meat fillings, but mostly today they are almost exclusively made with good old ‘rough puff pastry’ as we were taught to call puff pastry in my 14 century cookery classes at the convent I was sent to & taught - home economics by Sister Helen. Sister Helen was not quite as psychopathic as some of the other nuns, so I quite enjoyed her classes, with some exceptions, one being her lighting the old 1970’s gas Ascot water boiling heater. Each kitchen work space in the cookery room had a sink with one of these boilers, the work station where I was working at - the gas flame on the boiler was faulty & kept going out. Sister Helen came over to light the pilot light, I should really have picked up on the fact that she had a towel wrapped around her head with her back veil stuffed underneath the towel! She held the lighted wick at her full arms length making connection with the pilot light with the gas having already been turned full on. As the lighted tapper engaged with the gas vaper there was an explosion, Sister Helen dived to the floor & I was blown across the class room! Health & safety was never an issue at my school! Still it did the trick for that lesson the water warmed up!
Puff pastry, which we had to make from scratch at school, it is not that difficult, but why you would need to make it now days as you can buy really good flaky pastry at any shop. [Well not any shop obviously it helps if it is a grocery shop!] The history of puff pastry it was supposedly created by French painter and apprentice cook, Claude Gelée, in about 1645, when he accidently created a laminated dough whilst trying to make a form of rolled butter cake for his sick father. There is also evidence of puff pastry being developed in the early 1600's in Spain, which was an adaptation of the Middle Eastern filo pastry used in baklava. It quickly spread across Europe, and became a staple in French baking by the 1650's.
In the UK, Greggs, sells around 2.5 million sausage rolls per week! 140 million a year! So beloved is the sausage roll to the British public that Greggs & other stores have invented a vegan version, as we all know. I have never really understood why vegan & vegetarian’s want to copy/replicate meat dishes so precisely? But maybe this says something about how much the sausage roll is loved!
In 2012 there was a huge outcry when the British government tried to introduce a "Pasty Tax" on hot takeaway food that included sausage rolls. How disgraceful! The British public was so outraged that the government was forced to abandon this cunning plan.
Other countries have similar meat filled pastry recipes for example the Czech klobásník, the Dutch saucijzenbroodje, the German Münsterländer Wurstbrötchen & ‘sausage bread’ in the United States.
Hong Kong has developed its own style of sausage roll, the "sausage bun" (Chinese: 腸仔包) which is a sausage wrapped inside a soft milk bread style bun. Each to their own - I say!
Off to the oven ….
This is my go to recipe - I am not going to give you the precise recipe as you can work that out yourself, but I add.
chopped spring onions
light soy sauce
Lemon juice
chopped garlic
smoked paprika
pinch of chilli powder
Add the ingredients to your taste, but I can assure you that these sausage rolls will fly off the plate!
One other tip! You can make the sausage rolls, don’t cook them, freeze them in batches then when you want to be a super cook take them out of the freezer, brush them with beaten egg & cook them from from frozen. Works really well!
HAPPY CHRISTMAS
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HAPPY CHRISTMAS 〰️
ENJOY - HAPPY CHRISTMAS!!
