SE15age Rolls

(image: Fox and Favour)

I think its fair to say I like to make people happy by cooking for them.
It makes me happy too.
So when someone (especially my husband) expresses a penchant for a favourite food I usually try and turn my hand at making it for them, so it was with these.
I'm very proud to live in south east London, home to some of the best independent food shops, bakeries, butchers and restaurants in the UK, which is where Se15age Rolls came from.
(Peckham and Nunhead's postcode is SE15). I always buy the meat for these sausage rolls from my favourite butcher, Flock & Herd on Bellenden Road, but I wouldn't expect you to make the trip unless you were particularly dedicated to authenticity.
The rest of the ingredients are available from the wonderful General Store,  also on Bellenden Road, a beautiful, delicious and happily run shop which I was proud to have supplied with cakes and buns to for two years.
So these come from a combined love of Peckham and pleasing people. And loving sausage rolls. Its a not complicated.


It might seem like too much effort to make your own pastry, in which case buy ready made, theres no shame in that.

Mustard Rough-Puff Pastry
350g plain flour
1 tablespoon mustard powder
1 tablespoon maldon salt
250g cold, cubed unsalted butter
1 cup of cold water

Roughly mix flour, mustard, and salt in a large bowl. Have a large piece of clingfilm ready on a surface next to your bowl. Tip the cold, cubed butter into the bowl and stir to ensure it is fully coated in flour. Gradually add the cold water in small increments and mix to create a wet dough around the butter. It will be ugly, lumpy, and sticky but should hold together well. (I have not given precise amounts here as it depends on the size of your butter cubes, humidity, type of flour etc but it should be something around 100ml).
Turn the dough out onto the clingfilm, wrap well and place in the fridge to chill for at least one hour.
After the first hour, turn the dough out onto a floured surface, flour the top of the dough well and roll it out to around a 20cm x 30cm rectangle.
With the short end towards you fold the top third of the dough in on itself (you should now have a 20x20cm square, half of it double thickness). Next bring the bottom edge of the dough up and over the first fold. You should have a 20cm x 10cm rectangle, three layers thick. Wrap this and return to the fridge for a further half hour.

After half an hour bring the pastry out, return to a floured surface and place the oblong with the short side towards you. Roll out to 20 x 30cm again, repeat the folds and return to the fridge for a further 1/2 hour. Note: The pastry will *still* not look pretty, it might be a bit lumpy and you'll see streaks of the butter running through. This is absolutely what you're after...

Half an hour later you're ready for your final fold, you can repeat the process and return it to the fridge for later use, or roll out ready to load with your filling.

Sausage Rolls
400g relatively fatty pork mince (lean belly is good, a leaner pork mince like shoulder is best avoided)
150g smoked streaky bacon
several sprigs of thyme
lemon
maldon salt
pepper
whole nutmeg
1 egg
Portion of mustard ruff puff
Packet of ready rolled puff pastry

Finely chop the bacon (chopping thin cut streaky bacon, rather than using lardons gives a smooth smoky flavour without chewy lumps in your filling), add it to a large bowl with the pork mince, the leaves from several springs of thyme, zest of a lemon, a good grind of black pepper, grated half of nutmeg and a good pinch of salt. Mix together. (use your hands!)

Roll out your pastry to c. 30cm x 40cm, and cut it into 3 equal, long strips. Using your fingers mould 3 'sausages' of filling along each pastry length.

Beat the egg in a bowl and using a pastry brush wet one long edge of pastry. Bring the pastry over the top of the meat to form a long sausage roll. Using the tines of a fork, seal the seam and cut the sausage roll into 5cm long sections. Prick the top of each small roll, glaze with egg and sprinkle with a little malden salt.

Place on a baking tray and cook in a fan oven at 200c for 15 minutes, until golden.

I made a quick fig and mustard seed chutney to go with these. (And enjoyed a Brick Brewery Peckham Pils too, just to seal the SE15 deal.)

Quick Fig and Mustard Seed Chutney
3 fresh figs
2 tablespoons of mustard seeds
75g demerara sugar

3 cloves of garlic

1 red onion
thumbnail size lump of ginger
50ml cider vinegar
2 bay leaves
thyme
star anise
5 cloves

Finely slice the onion, garlic and ginger, chop the figs and throw all the ingredients into a pan and bring to a boil. Leave to bubble for 20 minutes until thick and jammy.

Pour into a sterilised jar and eat with any cold meats or cheeses.

Ricciarelli (or how I turned a life long love of baking into life long love)

(images: Fox and Favour)

A long time ago, when my husband and I were simply work colleagues he returned from a friend's wedding in Sienna raving about these soft almond biscuits, so in a bid to impress him I tracked down and tweaked a recipe and sent him home for Christmas with a tin of home made ricciarelli for his family. They devoured the lot in about 24 hours and we got engaged six months later... I'd like to think it was my endearing personality and great charm which sealed the deal but I think those biscuits had a lot to do with it.

I've made thousands of these over the past few years, for shops, cafes, weddings, parties and just for fun. They're delicious, simple, dairy & gluten free though, I fear, wildly inauthentic.

Ingredients

250g ground almonds

250g icing sugar

1/2 teaspoon gluten free baking powder

2 large egg whites

teaspoon vanilla essence

more icing sugar for rolling the biscuits in

Method

Mix the dry ingredients in a largish bowl.

In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold into the almond/sugar/flour/baking powder mix with a metal spoon or spatula - don't worry too much about knocking the air out of the egg whites since the mix you get feels sticky and heavy.

Add the vanilla essence into the dough.

 Take a walnut sized ball of biscuit dough and gently roll it into a ball (if you're feeling very meticulous and want to weigh each ricciarellli out, these proportions should yield c.24 24g biscuits). Roll the ball in a shallow dish of icing sugar until coated. To get the signature shape squish the ball lightly in the palm of your hand to flatten it, then pinch two sides into a rough diamond shape.

Lay on a flat, non-stick, lined baking sheet and cook in a 180 degree oven for about 10-15 minutes - until they start to go golden brown.

 Despite how tempting they are, do leave them to cool completely on the baking tray - removing them early is disastrous, the bottoms stay on the tray. Leaving them means they seal themselves like little meringues and you should be able to just pop them off the sheet with a flat knife.