Sausage Rolls with Fennel, Apple and Sage

• 500 ggood-quality pork sausagemeat (or sausages, skins removed)
• 1small Bramley or Cox apple, peeled and coarsely grated
• 2 tspfennel seeds, lightly crushed in a mortar
• 1 tbspfinely chopped fresh sage
• ½ tspfreshly grated nutmeg
• 1 tspcoarsely ground black pepper
• ½ tspfine salt
• 1small shallot, very finely chopped
• 1sheet (320g) ready-rolled all-butter puff pastry
• 1egg, beaten with the milk
• 2 tspnigella seeds
• flaky sea salt, for scattering
• 50 gplain flour, for dusting
• Mustard (optional)
• 1 tspwhole milk, for the egg wash

Method

1. 1Heat the oven to 200°C fan/220°C conventional and line two baking trays with greaseproof. Tip the grated apple into a clean tea towel and squeeze hard over the sink; you want the apple's moisture out, not in your pastry. Soggy bottoms start here.
2. 2In a large bowl, combine the squeezed apple, sausagemeat, crushed fennel seeds, chopped sage, nutmeg, black pepper, salt and shallot. Mix with your hands until evenly distributed but stop the moment it looks uniform; overworking sausagemeat makes it tight and bouncy when baked, and you want it loose and juicy.
3. 3Lightly dust the work surface with a little of the flour and unroll the puff pastry onto it, long edge facing you, and cut it lengthways down the middle into two long strips. Divide the sausagemeat in half and shape each half into a long sausage running down the centre of each strip; wet hands help here, the meat won't stick.
4. 4Beat the egg with the milk. Brush one long edge of each pastry strip with egg wash, then fold the other edge over the meat and press down firmly along the seam to seal. Roll each log so the seam sits underneath; that's what stops them bursting open in the oven.
5. 5Cut each log into 6 pieces (so 12 rolls total, or cut smaller into 24 picnic-sized ones if you're feeding a crowd). Space them well apart on the trays, seam-side down. Brush the tops generously with egg wash; twice if you want that proper deep mahogany shine; and scatter with nigella seeds and a pinch of flaky salt.
6. 6Slash the tops twice with a sharp knife to let steam escape. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the pastry is deeply golden and puffed and the centre of the sausagemeat reaches 75°C for 30 seconds. If the tops are colouring fast but the bottoms look pale, slide them onto the lower shelf for the last 5 minutes; the pastry needs to crisp underneath or it'll go limp as it cools.
7. 7Let them sit on the tray for 5 minutes before lifting; the pastry firms up as it cools and they'll hold together better. Eat warm with the optional mustard. For a picnic, cool on a rack, refrigerate within 2 hours and transport in a cool bag with ice packs.

Per serving

kcal

615

protein

18.5g

fibre

2.9g

carbs

40.7g

fat

43.2g