Sausage Rolls with Tomato and Red Pepper Relish

Method

1. Heat the oven to 200°C, or 180°C fan. Line two large trays with baking paper.
2. Put the mince, relish, mustard, caramelised onions, breadcrumbs, egg, fennel seeds, salt and pepper in a large bowl.
3. Mix with your hands for about a minute, until the mixture feels tacky rather than loose. Stop there. Worked any harder, mince goes springy and bounces back when you bite it.
4. Fry a teaspoon of the mixture in a hot pan and taste it. This is the only chance you get to fix the seasoning, and it is almost always more pepper.
5. Cover the bowl and chill for 20 minutes. Cold filling holds a log shape; room-temperature filling smears.
6. Cut each pastry sheet in half to give six rectangles.
7. Divide the filling into six, roll each portion into a log the length of the pastry, and lay it just off centre.
8. Brush the far edge with egg wash, roll the pastry over the filling, and settle each log seam side down. Press the seam with a fork.
9. Cut each log into six, giving 36 rolls of about 5cm. Space them on the trays with a gap between, or the sides steam instead of crisping.
10. Brush the tops with egg wash and scatter over the sesame seeds or salt flakes. Cut a small slit in the top of each one so the steam has somewhere to go.
11. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, swapping the trays around halfway, until deep golden and the bases lift crisp off the paper.
12. Rest for 5 minutes, then serve warm with the rest of the relish in a bowl beside them.

Make them a month early

This is the part that makes them worth cooking in December. Freeze them raw, on the tray, uncovered, until firm, then bag them. They keep 3 months and bake straight from frozen at the same temperature, with 10 minutes added. Do not thaw first; thawed raw pastry is a lost cause.

Cooked leftovers reheat at 180°C for 8 minutes and come back almost intact. A microwave will not, and turns the pastry to felt. The filling on its own can also be mixed a day ahead and kept covered in the fridge, which spreads the job across two evenings.

Questions people ask

What goes in a sausage roll filling?

Mince, a binder, an aromatic and something acidic. Pork mince, fresh breadcrumbs and an egg are the frame; onion and garlic are the aromatics; salt and pepper are not negotiable. The acidic part is what most recipes leave out, and it is where relish or mustard earns its place. Grated apple, carrot or zucchini do a similar job with less flavour.

Can you freeze uncooked sausage rolls?

Yes, and raw freezes better than cooked. Open freeze them on a tray until solid so they do not stick together, then bag them for up to 3 months. Bake from frozen at 200°C, adding about 10 minutes. Freezing them cooked works too, but the pastry never gets back the same shatter.

What else goes on a Christmas party table?

Something hot, something cold and something sharp, in roughly that order. Sausage rolls cover the hot; a board of cheese, crackers and cold meat covers the cold; and a couple of open jars cover the sharp, which is the bit people forget. Our festive entertaining range is built around that third category, and where a jar of tomato relish actually earns its place runs through the rest.

If you would rather make the relish as well as the rolls, our old fashioned tomato relish recipe covers both a slow version and a same-day one. If you would rather not, The Regimental Condiment Company range sits on the shelf in Corio, in the same room where we pack our Christmas hampers by hand. Orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched that day, and shipping is free Australia-wide over $100.