A few years ago Rose Lloyd Owen quit her job at a talent agency to become a caterer. Now, her company Peardrop counts the likes of Vivienne Westwood and Millie Mackintosh among her clients – in the first of several recipes for Country Life, she shares a moreish snack which always hits the spot.
This has become one of our most popular snacks at Peardrop – always a crowd pleaser and so popular with our wild ketchups. We make them ourselves from home-grown or foraged ingredients – our three are: beetroot, blackberry and black pepper; carrot, quince and honey; and nettle, green tomato, fennel, carrot tops and pear. If you don’t have time to make your own, we’d recommend finding good, home-made alternatives from a deli; they really complete the mouthful.
These sausage rolls were actually one of my first recipes – I was cooking for a Boden shoot and delivered a large one which completely fell apart… Now I’ve learnt that portioning them ahead of cooking is much smarter!
How to make prune & red onion sausage rolls
Ingredients (makes six large or 24 small sausage rolls)
- 125g red onions
- A glug of balsamic vinegar
- A glug of olive oil
- 625g good quality sausage meat
- 100g prunes, chopped small
- 10g finely chopped rosemary or sage
- 3g fennel seeds
- 500g puff pastry
- 1 egg
- A handful of seeds
- Salt & pepper
Method
Roughly chop the red onions, stir through the olive oil and balsamic and roast at 180c for 25 minutes until soft.
Add the red onions, prunes, fennel seeds, herbs and seasoning to the sausage meat and mix well (I always use my hands!)
Roll out the pastry into a rectangle, keep it a bit thicker if you are making large sausage rolls (about 3mm).
Lay a line of sausage meat lengthways and evenly over the pastry. Use your hands to even it out and stop it being lumpy.
Beat the egg and using a pastry brush, brush some egg onto the seam. Then very carefully using both hands, roll up the sausage and pastry so it forms a long, even cylinder. Trim the pastry underneath so that there is only 2-3cm overlap.
Brush all over with more egg and sprinkle with seeds (a mixture of white and black sesame are nice) and some sea salt. Cut carefully with a very sharp knife into 6 even portions. This can get messy so you’ll want to be careful.
Line a baking tray and oil it if necessary. Cook the sausage rolls for 20-25 minutes on 200c. Turn them round and up and down in the oven as appropriate. You might want to use a fish slice them to make sure they’re not sticking half way through. Know your oven as they need to cook from below as well as above.
Launched by Rose Lloyd Owen in 2013, Peardrop London has grown from delivering wholesome, flavour-packed lunch deliveries, to catering large-scale parties, weddings and business events for the worlds of fashion, film and media. Despite such expansion, Rose’s ethos is unwavering: resolutely using quality, seasonal produce in an imaginative and elegant way, that’s conscious of the environment and avoiding food waste.
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