Tara's Vegetarian Sausage Rolls

I promised my office that I would make the sausage rolls if they filled in our industry training diaries. I’m in charge of making sure this happens and as it's fairly annoying to keep reminding people I find that bribery helps. Anyway I have never previously catered for vegetarians when doing sausage rolls and needed to on this occasion.  

So what to do? Well I went online and found a recipe that looked like the craziest recipe ever for something that would taste good. I found it on The Veggie Mama blog and apparently it’s someone called Tara’s recipe. Now I don't know Tara but I feel it only right to credit her. These look very much like sausage rolls (which might put some people off if the whole point of not eating meat is to avoid what it looks like) with the oats adding texture to them. They are better hot than cold but what isn’t in the baking world? 

Ingredients

1 egg

1/3 cup cottage cheese

1/4 cup crushed walnuts

1 tbsp soy sauce

1 large shallot (or a small onion)

1/2 cup breadcrumbs

1/2 cup oats

1 tsp dry veggie stock (I crushed 1/3 dried veggie Knorr stock cube and that was about right I think)

A good grating of Parmesan cheese

Ready rolled sheet of puff pastry

Beaten egg  

1.    Preheat the oven to 200°C/GM 6.

2.    Put the egg, cottage cheese, soy sauce and shallot in a blender and whizz together.

3.    Put the breadcrumbs, oats and parmesan into a bowl and mix. Add the wet mix and stir together well.

4.    Unroll the puff pastry and cut in half lengthways. Put half the mixture as a sausage down each half. Put some beaten egg down one side and fold the pastry over the mixture, sealing by pushing down with fingers or pressing down with a fork.

5.    Cut into the desired size, brush the top with egg and bake for 20 minutes or so. You can top them with seeds or crushed onion crispies (I find it useful to have something that shows easily what is vegetarian and what isn’t).

Auntie Mary's Green Bean Casserole

I didn’t bake on Monday this week. My husband baked. I came home to a vase of flowers and The Thew making Jetlag Sausage Bake, which was fitting as I’d arrived back from Chicago. Sadly the trip was because my Auntie had passed away and I went over to support my family and attend her wake and funeral. I did think that I should bake something in her memory, which we’ll get to below, but it focused me on all the reasons why I miss her and how the world feels emptier without her presence in it.

My Auntie had many challenges to face in her life and did so with patience, generosity and love. She had three beautiful daughters, my cousins, and the last week spent with them has shown me that all her qualities exist within them and that I can still find her every now and again. Her eldest daughter has the ability to care for others that she shows through her role as a mum and care giver to her two younger sisters. She cares for those with special needs in the same awe inspiring way that her mum did, all the while keeping a smile on her face and finding the joy in situations. My Auntie’s sociability has transferred to her and also her middle daughter, who has to be dragged away from any social gathering. Yvonne lives in the moment and loves to talk to people, meet people and generally help out. Her love of children, another of my Auntie’s traits, can absorb her completely and she patiently tried to get my younger hyper activity self to sit still (without success) so she could lavish attention on me. The youngest, Bernadette, is thoughtful, kind and always likes to look stylish. My Auntie loved to shop for clothes and of all her daughters Bernadette revels most in new things to wear along with getting her nails and hair done. Her eldest daughter gave her two grandchildren who brought her so much joy and they are hitting adulthood with maturity, due to dealing with situations beyond their years, and showcasing elements of her wonderful nature and mixing them with their own to create something new and great.

So this is clearly my Auntie's amazing legacy that she left - her beautiful family that contains elements of her personality that can be found if looked for. Obviously nothing is as good as the real thing, a fact everyone will agree with me on, but it's a pretty decent second best that I'm happy to take right now.

In thinking of a fitting recipe to honour my Auntie my mum jogged my memory about a Green Bean Casserole she used to make. It’s a fairly staple part of American life as many people know about it but I’ll put it down here as it’s delicious. I’ll update with my own picture when I do make it as I need to track down the onions. Comfort eating is going to be one of the ways I get through how I feel right now but at some point I'm going to have to follow her lead and just get on with it. She showed that taking what you get and making the most of it can create fantastic beauty in this world.

Ingredients:

1 can Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup
180ml cup milk
Black pepper
500g green beans
300g French’s French Fried Onions (these are really hard to get in the UK. Sometimes you can find them as ‘salad toppings’ but they are amazing. If you know someone going to the States get them to bring them back).

1.    Heat oven to 180°/GM4.

2.    Mix soup, milk and black pepper in a baking dish. Stir in beans and 150g French Fried Onions.

3.    Bake for 30 min.

4.    Stir and top with the remaining 150g onions. Chuck back in the oven for 5 minutes until they are crunchy and then serve.

Jetlag Sausage Bake

I always find that aeroplane food, especially after a holiday that involved a lot of good food, puts a bit of a dent in the end of the trip. This time I decided to not really eat on the plane but brought some peanuts and raisins in the hope that they would keep hunger pangs at bay for 11 hours. It also meant I got to try out a jetlag cure which says you shouldn’t eat while travelling over time zones and wait until the next meal time when you land, before eating again. I sort of kept to it – I ate some cheese pasta and a yoghurt because peanuts and raisins get fairly dull – and actually now don’t feel too bad. However this could be attributed to my determination to stay awake for about 26 hours (give or take a couple of short naps) and then sleep for about 10 hours. I can’t say it was entirely scientific.

Coming home always means that you’re not only dealing with the down from the end of a holiday but all the clothes washing and the restocking of the kitchen as well. Today I really couldn’t be bothered with much hassle at dinner and The Thew is on a massive health kick due to ‘overindulgence’ on holiday (we have differing view on what constitutes overindulgence but I’m sure I’ll get on to that in time) and the fact that he has to run 66 miles in a couple of weekends time. He also does the washing up so I thought I should be nice to him.

This is where the Jetlag Sausage Bake comes in. It’s basically things still in my fridge and a few things I could pick up on my way home. To be honest you could chuck most things in and it would work but below is what I put in.

Ingredients

1 pack of good quality sausages

1 large sweet potato

3 or 4 small to medium carrots

1 red pepper

1 red onion

A few slices of chorizo

1 blub of garlic

Some dried herbs

1.   Preheat the oven to 200° or GM6.

2.   Chop the sausages in half (or not but I like how it looks), chop the sweet potato, carrots, pepper and onion into fairly large pieces. Chuck them all into a baking tray. Add the chorizo.

3.   Cut the garlic blub in half and add to the rest of the ingredients. You can just use cloves and less garlic but I just like how the bottom of the bulb looks in the tray!

4.   Season and add some dried herbs. I went heavy on the sage because of the sausages but whatever you have will work.

5.   Add some oil and whack in the oven for about 45 minutes. Done.

6.   Eat straight from the tray if you want to minimise the washing up.