Apricot and Sage Sausage Rolls

And why you don't need to scoff all of your Christmas specialties in December

Happy New Year Wenches, SeaGuru here. I dearly hope that this year brings you all that you wish for, what ever that may be. For me, 2024 felt like a year to put in the work, and now 2025 will be a year to reap the rewards. I cannot express enough the power of manifestation through journaling, visualization, positive thought and repetition. With an open heart that is ready and expecting to accept, our desires will begin to unfold in front of us in due time. Sending love, comfort and prosperity to you all.

Now back to my regularly scheduled Wench content.

---

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and ate your fairshare of festive fare. I know I certainly did, but there just aren’t enough days in December to cook and eat all of the Christmas traditions that I’d like to. There is so much to do before the holidays, especially as a small business that relies on this time of year for a large portion of my annual income, that making mince pies, Christmas puddings and sausage rolls simply go on the back burner. Before I know it it’s Christmas Eve and I finally get around to making it all and I’m too bloody full to want or eat any of it.

So let me introduce January; a whole month with not a lot going on, but plenty of time to indulge in those Christmas comestibles in between the healthy, hearty soups and stews that usually grace our post-holiday tables.

Sausage rolls were and still are a mainstay in my childhood home (and probably most British homes) at this time of year. Apparently my Aunty Rachel made the best ones but I think there are some pretty good contenders out there! Last year on our trip back to the UK Trevor claimed he had the best sausage roll of his life in Cornwall at Gear Farm.

Gear Farm is a small regenerative family farm near Helston that can only be reached by the smallest, squiggliest lanes you may ever drive. Locals drive these roads at at least 50mph, and possibly a few Cornish Scrumpy’s deep so it really is a white knuckle adventure. The farm is renowned for their Cornish pasties (which I have done a whole post on before!) and often sell 1000 a day from their very small farm shop.

---

---

And indeed, the pasties are phenomenal. But so are their sausage rolls! Heritage pork, (the kind that taste real porky) is ground up with plenty of fat, apricots, herbs and seasoning and all rolled up in an all-butter puff pastry and baked to golden perfection. It’s a wonderful lunch out of a grease-stained paper bag on a harbour quay, or a light dinner paired with a salad or baked beans if you’re an absolute looney.

There are so many variations of a sausage roll and you can get quite creative if you fancy. Switch up the sausage meat seasonings, or even the meat itself.
I’ve seen sausage rolls laced with savory chutneys, haggis or black pudding! The only mainstay is a high quality all-butter puff pastry; absolutely no skimping there.

I tried to recreate the Gear Farm pasty that Trevor still dreams about using ground wild pig that we harvested last year. You can absolutely use any pork or pre-made sausage meat in this recipe just be careful and hold off on adding any extra salt if you choose to use pre-seasoned sausage meat like bulk breakfast sausage meat. Because the wild pig was on the leaner side we ground it with a fair amount of pork fat before freezing, about 20% I expect so it was basically sausage meat sans seasoning.

The pastry is a rough puff recipe from Julius Robert’s book The Farm Table. It’s actually very simple and nowhere near as complicated as a true puff pastry. It doesn’t let anyone down in the layers department either and makes a very flaky pastry indeed! You can make it up to 2 days in advance but at least 2 hours in advance to give it time to chill and relax the gluten.

TOP TIP: Preheat your oven well in advance so it’s nice and hot when the sausage rolls go in. You want to shock the pastry so that it has time to rise before the butter melts out of it. This is tricky on the boat in our small oven and I inevitably end up with some degree of butter leakage but it always seems to work out in the end. These cook phenomenally in a land oven!

---

Apricot and Sage Sausage Rolls
with homemade rough puff pastry

Makes 8

For the pastry (make up to 2 days ahead or at least 2 hours ahead):

• 1 3/4 cups of plain flour

• 1 tsp of fine salt

• 3/4 cups plus 2 tbsp of cold salted butter

• 10 tbsp of cold water

• 1 egg, beaten

Cut butter into walnut sized cubes and toss in a large bowl with the flour and salt. No need to break the butter up any more. Add half of the water and use a fork to gently combine. Add more water as needed to just bring the dough together in a shaggy ball. The butter should still be in big chunks! Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes roll out the dough on a floured surface in an A4 paper sized rectangle. The dough should have a marbled effect. With the pastry in a portrait orientation (short side against your body) fold the bottom third into the middle and the then the top third down over the fold you just made, almost like a little envelope. Turn the pastry 1/4 turn (90 degrees) one way or the other and roll out again. Repeat the roll and fold process 3 times before wrapping the pastry and allowing it to chill and rest in the fridge. This roll, fold and turn process rolls out the butter within the layers and creates the puff!

For the sausage rolls:

• 1.5lbs of fatty ground pork/wild pig, or sausage meat

• 4-5 large fresh sage leaves, finely chopped

• 1 tsp fresh rosemary, finely chopped

• 1/2 cup of dried apricots, diced quite small

• 1/2 tsp mace or some generous gratings of fresh nutmeg

• 1/2 tsp dried chili flakes or a fresh red chili

• 1.5 tsp salt (unless using pre-seasoned sausage meat)

• Fresh black pepper

• Fennel seeds for sprinkling

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F and line a baking sheet (with sides) with parchment. These will leak pork fat and/or butter so sides is a must!

In a large bowl using your hands mix all of the ingredients good and proper.

Remove pastry from the fridge and roll out to a 10” x 14” rectangle. Trim the edges slightly so they are clean. Place the pastry in front of you longways so the short edge is against your body. Lay the sausage meat in a chunky line on the right-hand side of the pastry from going top to bottom leaving a half inch strip of pastry on the outer right edge. This is where you will fold, seal and crimp the sausage roll.

Brush the 1/2” edge with beaten egg and fold the pastry over the sausage meat to meet the egg washed side. It doesn’t matter if there is too much pastry overlap, the important thing is to make sure the pastry is nice and snug against the sausage meat. Use a knife to trim the sealed edge so it’s neat and tidy and use a fork to lightly crimp the sealed edge.

Take a sharp knife and cut the long sausage roll into 1.5” or 2” rolls. I usually get 8 sausage rolls out of this recipe but you can go bigger or smaller, baring in mind that they do shrink a little. Lay them on the baking tray, brush with the remaining beaten egg and sprinkle with fennel seeds.

Bake for at least 30-40 minutes, but most importantly until they are deep golden brown. Allow to cool at room temp and then refrigerate. Bring them to room temp or reheat before serving.