Sausage Rolls and Tomato Sauce

What to do with a kilo of minced beef that you forgot you defrosted? Make sausage rolls!
First, make the sausage mince.

SAUSAGE MINCE
Use 500g mince and add a handful of fresh herbs or a good sprinkling of dried. For the first batch I used sage, parsley and thyme. The second batch I made with dried Italian herbs.

Tear up around 4 slices stale bread or use about 1/2 cup dried breadcrumbs and add to the bowl. To season, use a generous amount of salt and pepper or try my All Purpose Seasoning. Add one egg and 1/2 MC of water. Add garlic and onion if desired. Mix together on speed 3 - 4 until it looks like sausage mince. I actually taste it at this stage. Just touch it to my tongue to check the seasoning.

When putting together sausage rolls, take a wad of the sausage mince and roll out on the bench like a sausage to the length of the puff pastry sheets. I find this makes the sausage rolls more even in size.
Score the rolls of filled puff pastry with a knife. I generally make four from one roll. These can be frozen at this stage.

Place on an oven tray and brush with egg. Bake in a pre heated (220C) oven for about 10 minutes. Reduce to 200 and continue cooking for a further 10 minutes or until golden brown and puffed. Cool on a rack. Once cooled, these can be frozen.
To make these gluten free, use rice crumbs or rice flakes instead of bread.

This is such an easy recipe there's no excuse not to make your own tomato sauce. So much nicer than the bought stuff!
I found this recipe at Mumdeep. She calls it Aussie Style Thermomix Tomato Sauce. I had more than 500g of tomatoes, so I doubled the recipe. When doubling recipes in the Thermomix, I find it's best to add half the time again, rather than doubling the cooking time.

Here's the recipe with my tweaks

TOMATO SAUCE
1kg very ripe tomatoes
2 large cooking apples
180g Apple Cider Vinegar
180g rapadura sugar (or brown sugar)
2 - 4 Tbsp tomato paste
4 tsp salt (can use less)
2 tsp pepper
1 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves

Cut tomatoes and apples (don't peel) into quarters and place into Thermomix bowl. Add vinegar. Cook for 45 minutes/100/speed 2. This helps keep the colour of the sauce lovely and red.
Let cool for 1/2 an hour or so and then blend on speed 8 to 9 until smooth.
Add sugar, tomato paste and spices and cook a further 45 minutes/100/speed 2. Place basket on top to prevent it spitting out all over your bench and walls!
Adjust seasoning to your liking.
Place into warmed bottles and cap. Tip upside down for ten minutes. Turn up the right way and you'll find the bottles will seal.
If I have any left over bought tomato sauce, I add that to the bowl rather than waste it. In fact, if you're introducing a fussy family member to home made tomato sauce, this is a good way to do it. Just reduce the amount of bought sauce you use each time you make it.

Enjoy!

Megan

Reinventing Leftovers

I always make large amounts of bolognaise sauce, beef stews and casseroles. I normally like to freeze the leftovers. This time, I did as my mother did before me and created a new dish from old leftovers. Not that old, only a few days!

My bolognaise sauce was made with Mediterranean vegetables of eggplant, zucchini & mushrooms. By the time I added everything, I had an enormous pot of sauce! The basic passata is made with a reduction of sautéed celery, garlic, onion and carrot in the Thermomix. Add to this canned tomatoes, tomato paste, herbs and seasonings. This is then added to the sautéed mince and chopped vegetables and cooked slowly for a couple of hours on the stove top. The day I made this, we ran out of gas, so it was cooked in the oven in a large Bessemer pan with a lid.

After eating it for a couple of days, there was still a fair bit left, so tonight I made it into a casserole.

Bolognaise Casserole
Leftover bolognaise sauce
Cooked pasta - I used macaroni
1 egg

Cheese Sauce (Thermomix)
500g milk
50g plain flour
100g cheese - mix of parmesan and tasty
2 eggs
salt and pepper
pinch nutmeg

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C.

Place bolognaise sauce into a casserole dish and mix in cooked pasta and beaten egg.
To make cheese sauce, grate cheeses in Thermomix first on speed 7 - 8 for a few seconds and set 50g aside.
Add remaining ingredients to the other 50g of cheese in the TM bowl and cook on 90 degrees for 8 minutes on speed 4.

Add about 1/4 cup of the cheese sauce to the bolognaise in the dish and mix. Pour the remaining sauce over the top and sprinkle with remaining 50g grated cheeses. Bake for about 40 minutes or so.

Make Your Own Mince

Voila! Minced Steak

Today I wanted to make pasties so that Steve and his dad can take them for lunches during seeding rather than boring sandwiches.

Unfortunately, I had no mince in the freezer. But, I did have some chuck steak which I could easily turn into mince in the Thermomix!

To mince any meat, including chicken, lamb and pork, it's best to be semi frozen and cut into 2cm cubes. Do small amounts at one time - I prefer to do about 100g each time. Place cubes into the bowl and mince on speed 7 for around 8 - 10 seconds.
It does make a racket, so be prepared!

So, no need to buy mince again!

Megan's Perfect Pasties

These are the best pasties you'll ever taste!
I am so thrilled to have made these. I adore bakery pasties and recently had a horrible experience of (not) eating a truly awful pastie from the local bakery in town. The pastry was lovely, but the filling was a hard lump  of something that tasted rather like cardboard.

For the pastry, make a batch of Rough Puff Pastry, using the method described here. Roll and turn about 6 times and then cut in half and refrigerate for half an hour or so.

If pushed for time, use ready rolled puff pastry. I prefer Pampas 25% Fat Reduced. It works a treat.


To make the filling:
250g lean beef mince
3 carrots
2 onions
1 turnip
½ to 1 parsnip
1 small potato
2 Tbsp rolled oats (soaks up liquid - thanks Judy!)
4 tsp beef stock powder
2 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
a few frozen peas
1 beaten egg for glazing.

I don't bother peeling the root vegetables. Just chop roughly.  Just make sure carrot is cut a little smaller than other vegies as it's harder.

Place mince, stock powder, peas and pepper into a large mixing bowl. Stir together.

To chop vegetables, place into food processor or Thermomix and chop on speed 5 for a couple of seconds at a time. Use the spatula to stir around and chop again if necessary. Add to mince with the remaining ingredients.

To make pasties:
Preheat oven to 200C. Line two trays with baking paper.
Roll out pastry and cut circles using a small side plate (I sometimes make smaller ones using my pie maker cutter).  Brush inside with beaten egg and place filling on one half, avoiding edges. Fold other half over and seal with finger crimping. Prick with a fork and place on baking tray.
Brush with beaten egg and bake for half an hour.
Remove from tray and place straight onto oven racks and bake for a further 10 minutes. If using bought puff pastry, there's no need to do this. I just bake until they're cooked and remove to a cake rack to cool.

 Filling the pastie

 Ready for the egg glaze and baking

 I used 3/4 of the pastry and made 10 pasties. The remaining pastry was made into 2 pastie sized apple turnovers, a croissant and some spirals with sugar on top.

Hints and Tips:
I now make snack sized pasties using the larger ring cutter from the electric pie maker - 12 cm diameter. I make 2 lots of pastry and cut into circles, laying each circle on a plate with baking paper in between (keep the baking paper in a plastic bag for next time).

If you make the filling a day or so before, place it in a colander over a bowl in the fridge. Just put a plate on top to stop it drying out. This will allow liquid to drain. Because there's salt in the mixture, it draws liquid from the meat and the vegetables.

My puff pastry making is now perfected and puffs up so much more than previously. Here's a photo of a recent batch.

Delicious Rissoles

Rissoles are a pretty basic thing to make and I have never used a recipe in my life, but faced with only a tray of mince in the freezer, I went to my heaving bookshelf (full of cookbooks) and found a Women's Weekly book all about mince!
The very first recipe was for Rissoles, so I thought, what the heck, I'll use this recipe. It was unusual in that the bacon and onion are cooked before adding to the mixture. I've used bacon previously in rissoles and have found that it turns them pink, making them appear uncooked.
But the cooking made all the difference and definitely added to the flavour.

I didn't have enough beef mince (I like to make double quantity as they are great cold), so added pork mince to the mix and felt that this then needed sage and apple, so here's the tweaked recipe:

Tasty Rissoles
500g beef mince
500g pork mince
3 rashers bacon, finely diced
1 onion, finely diced
1 green apple, finely diced
2 cups fresh breadcrumbs
1/2 cup chopped parsley
6 large sage leaves, or 1 tsp dried sage
2 eggs
2 Tbsp worcestershire sauce
4 Tbsp barbecue sauce
fresh ground black pepper

Blitz breadcrumbs and herbs in the Thermomix or food processor. Sauté bacon and onion in a little butter or oil until golden. Add apple and sauté for a few minutes. Allow to cool a little before adding to the rest of the ingredients. Form into patties and refrigerate until ready to cook.
Fry in oil until well browned on both sides.
I would have posted a photo, but they're all gone!!