These gourmet sausage rolls are hearty enough for morning tea, lunch or dinner. 

Recipe: Basket by the Door

Serves 4–6

If serving them as a main meal, add a big salad full of peppery greens and a spicy tomato chutney like the one below. Make up a double batch of sausage rolls and freeze them (uncooked) in long logs, ready to bake from frozen, and you’ll be ready to feed the hungry hordes in minutes.

INGREDIENTS

1 tbsp (20 g) butter
1 tsp fennel seeds
2 granny smith apples, cut into small pieces
1 red onion, diced
500 g (1 lb 2 oz) pork mince
1 tbsp thyme leaves
3 sheets butter puff pastry, thawed 1 egg, lightly whisked
2 tbsp sesame seeds
1 tsp sea salt
tomato chutney, to serve

METHOD

Melt the butter in a heavy-based frying pan over medium–high heat. Add three-quarters of the fennel seeds and the apple pieces and cook for a few minutes or until softened. Reduce the heat to low, add the onion and cook, stirring often, for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and allow to cool.

Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F). Line a large baking tray with baking paper.

In a large bowl, mix the pork and thyme with the cooled apple mixture, and season with salt and pepper. Take a third of this mixture and place it on one of the thawed pastry sheets, making a sausage shape along the bottom third of the sheet. Roll as tightly as you can to create one long sausage. Repeat with the remaining pastry and pork mixture.

If you’re freezing the sausage rolls at this point, wrap them in plastic wrap and pop them in the freezer. Otherwise, onwards! Using a pastry brush (or your fingers if you don’t have one), brush the egg over each sausage roll. Sprinkle the sesame seeds, sea salt and remaining fennel seeds over the top.

Bake for 35–40 minutes or until the sausage rolls are golden brown. Cut into pieces and serve warm or at room temperature with tomato chutney.

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Recipe extracted from Basket by the Door by Sophie Hansen, published by Murdoch Books, RRP $45.00.