Black Pudding, Spring Onion & Sage Sausage Rolls

I was walking abound town the other morning and had a craving for a sausage roll. I passed a local bakers and popped in to buy what turned out to be quite an expensive hot snack at £2. What a crappy excuse for a sausage roll!! Flabby soft white-ish meat paste filling with a greasy soggy pastry. Christ alive, if a baker can't make a decent sausage roll then who the hell can........well, err.....I believe I can!

Now this was a bit of an experiment. I didn't want to go mad and make my own sausage meat or puff pastry but I wanted to be sure I could blow the socks off the bakers offering. Adding black pudding to the mix gives a really savoury depth of flavour and the herbs and spring onions freshen up the whole thing. Buy good quality sausages rather than sausage meat as the quality is better. Oh and try to buy 'all butter' puff pastry, it is a really good product. Total cost for 6 sausage rolls - about five quid or 85p each. So, less than half the price and quite literally 10 times better in flavour and texture.

Ingredients:

All butter puff pastry - 1 pre-rolled sheet or 1/2 a block

1 pack of quality herby sausages - meat removed from skins

Quality black pudding - 150g, skin removed, meat crumbled

Spring Onions - 1 bunch finely sliced

Sage, 1 small bunch, stems discarded, leaves finely chopped

Salt and Black Pepper

1 egg - beaten

Method:

Preheat the oven to 210c. Mix together the sausage meat, black pud, spring onions, sage and a generous seasoning of salt and pepper. Fry off a little sausage meat in a non-stick pan to test the seasoning and correct if necessary.   Roll out the pastry to the thickness of a 50p coin (you may need to roll out the pre-rolled sheet a little more, they tend to be a bit thick). Cut the pastry sheet in half down the longest length. Divide the sausage meat in half and place in a rough sausage shape down the centre of each length of the pastry. Egg wash the edge furthest away from you.  Roll the pastry away from you tightly wrapping around the sausage meat and seal with the seam underneath the sausage roll. Divide into 3 sausage rolls and repeat for the other piece of pastry. Slash and egg wash the tops and bake for 30 mins or so turning to ensure even coloration.