Some food items and ingredients are just so tasty and complete in themselves that there is no need to go into elaborate steps and add tonnes of ingredients to bring out their flavour. This is so true for sausages, especially when you are using frank sausages that are made of chicken, with jalapeño peppers and cheese. Why would you want to add anything more and make it a hotchpotch of flavours and ruin the taste?

So in today’s recipe of sausage rolls, I am using just two ingredients — sausages and puff pastry — both very versatile, easy to use and very safe bets as very little can go wrong when cooking anything using them. Thus these are ideal ingredients for novice cooks, and also lazy ones, who want to make something themselves, with little help from others, and still come up with something that tastes so good that it can impress and satisfy anyone.

There are just two things to take note of in this simple recipe and you will come up with a superb dish — you’ve got to fold the puff pastry well and watch the baking to give it just the right golden crust. The rest is easy, so let’s get started!

Ingredients

• 250g puff pastry dough

• 5-6 sausages, large

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees centigrade.

Defrost the puff pastry till it is cooler than the room temperature. If it is completely defrosted, it may get a bit sticky to handle so I like the puff pastry to be a bit cold and firm to touch.

Cut it in half, roll one half on a floured board into a rectangular shape that is about half an inch thick. Now cut medium-thin strips, about an inch thick.

Cut the sausages into half, take one half and carefully roll the puff pastry strip around it, starting from one end. Try not to leave a gap in between and when you get to the end, press both the ends to the last roll of the strip to make it stick together.

Line a baking tray with parchment or baking paper, and place the rolls at a little distance so as to give them space to expand while baking.

Bake for about 10-12 minutes, if they are a little brown at the bottom, which you can ask an adult to check by gently lifting one end of the parchment paper, then they are done. Now turn on the top grill and bake for three to five minutes more till you have a nice medium golden colour on top.

Enjoy it while hot, with any dip or just ketchup.

Note: the amount of puff pastry you need will depend on the number of sausages you use.

Published in Dawn, Young World, October 24th, 2020