Saturday 17 November 2012

Puff pastry morning

Welcome to my new follower taliah drayak.

Saturday dawned, dull, damp and miserable and quite cool. DB went of to a flea market in town and to begin his Christmas shopping. I stayed at home to get on with some baking.

Last night, I had thawed 4 of my home made sausage rounds, 2 of Sage and 2 of Italian. I had also defrosted one half of a pack of puff pastry. This was divided into two as I wasn't planning to make too many sausage rolls to freeze for Christmas. Over the years and certainly since coming off war ration eating, our regard to economy hasn't changed much.

The pastry was cut into one half and two quarters. Each of the quarters was rolled out and turned into sausage rolls. I managed to get 11 of pork and sage and 12 of pork and Italian seasoning (with some newly added, diced sun dried tomatoes for extra flavour (some got eaten before the photograph was taken!!).



The sausage meat patties originally cost £2.84 for 4 rounds, the pastry 60p, so 23 cocktail sausage rolls cost 15p each. Not the cheapest I know but like I said on 19th September 2012, the patties were almost 100% meat as I didn't have breadcrumbs at the time. Besides, I know I can eat them without worrying about gristle, or other chewy bits, which I do occasionally find in bought sausages.

8 of each have now been frozen for Christmas. The remainder we shall eat over the weekend.

I still had 1/2 the pastry left over and wasn't sure what to make so opted for a trial of potato, onion and cheese pasties.

It was rolled out, cut into 4 squares and had the outsides trimmed away to allow even rising. 


I grated 1 medium potato and squeezed it dry and put it into a bowl. One medium grated onion followed, plus around 1 oz of grated cheese, lots of black pepper and a dessert-spoon of left over and drying out philly cheese.


Each square was dampened around its edges, the filling added and then the pastry joined together. They were baked at 220 Celsius for between 20 and 25 minutes until golden and cooked through. Not sure of the cost each but probably around 25p each.

So what happened to the scraps of pastry leftover. I rolled them together (something you are not supposed to do with puff pastry), rolled it out into a rough circle around 6”. I sprinkled cinnamon on it followed by sugar. It should have been baked but I forgot and had already switched off the oven.

I heated a small omelette pan and dry fried it on medium until it puffed up, lifted it up, added a small knob of butter then flipped it over to the sugar side to finish. It was lovely. Sorry, forgot to photograph it!

12 comments:

  1. I like the look of the cheese, potato and onion pasties!

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    1. They are rather nice. We had one each for lunch yesterday and will have the rest either today or Monday.

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  2. I've never heard of frying puff pastry before, but it sounds delicious, as do your cheese, potato and onion pasties. A very productive Saturday xxxx

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    1. Had planned on baking but forgot. Dry fried first side then was worried about the sugar sticking so added a little butter.

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  3. Sounds delicious anyway.Often the nicest tasting things are the ones that go slightly wrong or are experiments!

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    1. True, I am never afraid to try and luckily, DB will always eat what I produce.

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  4. They do look rather lush! We have a Christmas tradition going back to oooh, at least the war years (before my time!) My mum made an amount of her best ever short-crust patry and lined a swiss-roll type tin, spead over sausage meat mixed with herbs, bread crumbs and a beaten egg, covered with pastry lid and baked. This would be Christmas night pass-around with chutneys, cheeses etc etc and even now Christmas is not complete without I make my own version. I really like the fact that it cuts out all the messing about doing individual ones.
    I love the idea of the cheese onion and potato ones - I think they may be on the menu next week!

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    1. Sounds good but I'm not too keen on sausage meat, even my own, so we stick to little 'pop in the mouth at one go' size rolls.

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  5. Those look lovely - I think I'm going to miss sausage rolls this Christmas. I used to add apple and onion to mine . I make cheese, onion and potato pasties for KL - she loves them. Did DB find anything at the flea market?

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    1. Is that because of the no meat or no fat or both? There are some nice samosa recipes around, you could mash some of the filling up then put that inside pastry, should be good (got a recipe if you want it). No DB didn't find anything, he was hoping to exchange a duplicate of something but the chap wasn't there. Did start his shopping though!

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  6. Brilliant ! When I re-roll scraps of pastry I stack them on top of each other rather than scrunch them up in a ball and then roll out, seems to work out better.
    I do make Delia Smith rough puff pastry for sausage rolls also. Nothing like having a good bake morning !

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  7. I love sausage rolls. We tried a new ground turkey sausage (adding my own spices to ground turkey) and I think we may try sausage rolls with it.

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