WILL’S PORK, SWEET FENNEL AND SAGE SAUSAGE ROLLS
PREP AND COOK TIME: 1 HOURMAKES: 12 SMALL SAUSAGE ROLLS
50g butter
2 fennel bulbs, finely chopped
500g pork mince (meat to fat ratio 70:30)
1 egg yolk
1 French shallot, finely chopped
1 tablespoon fennel seeds, crushed in a mortar and pestle
1 bunch of sage, leaves picked and finely chopped
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
sea salt flakes freshly ground black pepper
3 sheets of frozen puff pastry, thawed
1 egg, beaten, for egg wash
1. Preheat your oven to 160°C.
2. Melt the butter in a large saucepan on low heat, add the fennel and cook until softened and sweet, around 40 minutes. Remove from the pan and allow to cool slightly.
3. Mix the mince, fennel, egg yolk, shallot, 2 teaspoons of crushed fennel seeds, the sage and dijon in a large bowl and season heavily with salt and pepper. Split the mixture evenly into three portions.
4. Place a piece of puff pastry on your work surface. At one edge, place one-third of the meat mixture and shape into a sausage. Roll the pastry over the meat mixture until the whole sausage is covered. Using a pastry brush, brush the overlapping pastry edges with a little egg wash. Trim any excess pastry and seal the the overlapping edges with the prongs of a fork. Repeat this process with the remaining pastry and pork mince, so that you have three long sausage rolls.
5. Cut each roll into four smaller rolls, brush the tops with the egg wash, sprinkle on the remaining crushed fennel seeds and season with salt and pepper. Bake for 20–25 minutes until golden. Serve warm with Homemade Ketchup.
WILL It doesn’t get much more Australian than a sausage roll … or does it? I think it may have been us Brits who brought them over with us on the boat. Apparently just one single bakery in England sells 2.5 million sausage rolls per week! No wonder we arrived on these shores already addicted to them. So, who has been encouraging our addiction since we have been here? The government, that's who! At our citizenship ceremonies, we were both congratulated on becoming Australian and before we knew it the sausage rolls were doing the rounds! I’m not complaining, we love sausage rolls as much as the next Australian and we are proud to have a recipe devoted to the humble snag.