Black Pudding Sausage Rolls

I like the weird, quirky things about myself. They make me who I am. The sharing of my recollection of how excited I remember being when, due to attending high school, my library card permitted me to take out ten books instead of three made The Thew re-evaluate how square I actually am. However I feel that this coupled with my love of hard house, and my sobriety until 22, gives people something to think about when boxing me up. Not that means I don’t mind being square.  

My quirkiness does extend to food and this is where The Thew has most fun working out how my brain and taste buds work. My unrelenting hatred of whole tomatoes continues to boggle him, as does my reluctance to eat porridge until I have been up and about for an hour. He likes to quiz me on food items and my reasons for not liking them and/or the restrictions I have on time of day, dish and situations I’ll eat them in. 

For someone who can be fussy about things I love fish and shellfish, something that I have to put down to the Irish side of my family living by the sea and eating it all the time. I spent days out on the rocks hacking off barnacles and dropping them on the top of Momo’s range to cook in their shells. The Irish use of black pudding, and white, at breakfast has stayed with me and I happily eat it when my other random food issues would lead people to believe I’d avoid it. Therefore when thinking about another type of sausage roll to make I thought that I would use black pudding. I love scotch eggs that use it in the mixture so why not? They came out well, if you like black pudding, with the sausage giving it stability in the roll but not distracting from the flavour of the pudding. Very good hot and not at all bad cold if I do say so myself.

Ingredients

300g good quality black pudding (it's not expensive but get a good one as the spices will come out)

1 x pack of plain pork sausages (about 350g but a bit more or less won't really hurt)

1 x pack ready rolled puff pastry

1 egg, beaten 

1.    Preheat the oven to 190°C/GM 5.

2.    Crumble the black pudding into a bowl. Add the sausage and mix them together. Hands are best. I'd recommend adding less sausages to begin with and then fry off a very small patty in a pan to taste it. If you think it needs more sausage then add it but worth testing out the taste before committing to it (this also works when making stuffing).

3.    Roll out the pastry on a floured surface so it’s a little wider and longer. Cut in two along the middle so you have two thin rectangles of pastry.

4.    Place half the mixture in a sausage down each bit of pastry, wash one edge with egg and roll the pastry over the mixture to form the roll. Press down the edges and cut the rolls to your desired size.

5.    Place on a non-stick baking tray, or on greaseproof paper, wash with more egg on top and bake for about 20 minutes. If you are making smaller ones then 15 minutes should do it.

6.    Cool and serve. Easy!

Makes 16-24 depending on how small you cut them up.