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

Special Sauce

This is a recipe normally known as Comeback Sauce. It is so named for it's popularity as a dipping sauce for crumbed chicken, fish or other seafood. It originated in southern Mississippi, the recipe being credited to a Greek restaurant there.

I call it Special Sauce, as it's one of those yummy special sauces that you can make all your own with a few tweaks.

It's not quite Thousand Island Dressing, nor Seafood Sauce, but stands on it's own. I love it with smoked salmon and avocado on shredded lettuce. My son-in-law goes through this stuff in days, so I have to make it regularly.

Special Sauce

The Bush Gourmand

1 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup tomato ketchup

1/4 cup OO

1/4 cup chilli sauce - I sometimes use Sweet Chilli Sauce

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp Dijon mustard

1/2 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/4 tsp Tabasco sauce

Juice of 1 lemon

Blend and bottle. Let the ingredients marry a while before using as a sauce for fish, chicken etc.

I made a double batch today in the Thermomix and tweaked it a bit. Many of my ingredients were home made, adding an extra 'special' to this Special Sauce. I've added guar gum to thicken it a little. This is totally optional. You may prefer to use agar agar or gelatine. Either way, dissolve these in liquid first.

Special Sauce
The Bush Gourmand

1/2 tsp guar gum
90g light OO or macadamia oil
300g Mayonnaise
130g Tomato sauce
140g Chilli sauce (half Chilli and half Sweet Chillli)
1 Tbsp Worcestershire Sauce
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp ground white pepper
1/2 tsp Tabasco sauce
1/4 tsp paprika
Juice of 2 lemons


Measure out the olive oil in the Thermomix and add the guar gum, avoiding the blades. Blend for 5 seconds on speed 6. Add remaining ingredients and blend again on speed 6 for 10 seconds.
Bottle and label.

Store in the fridge.

Enjoy!

Megan

The Challenge Continued...

While the one month long Pantry and Freezer Challenge has officially finished, I'm still vowing to use up everything in my freezers.
I have one chest freezer which is nearly empty, an upright freezer with a mainly frozen fruit for sorbets etc, and two fridge freezers.
Luckily, one fridge freezer has some nice porterhouse steak from the local store which has only been there since January. So, no freezer burn!!
Steak, potato gratin and salad for tea tonight! And, of course, pepper sauce.

My Pepper Sauce is made with a secret gravy mix that I buy which is delicious. Use any gravy mix and add a good glug of sherry, about 1/2 a cup of cream (or skinny tinny if you're watching) and some crushed mixed peppercorns to taste. Cook as normal. If you have any beef stock in the fridge or freezer add some of that for a more intense flavour.

The Challenge - Friday & Saturday Week 2

Today it was another get your own breakfast day, but at least we had nice home made bread.

I had lunch on the road as I was heading to Bremer Bay to do a talk for their International Women's Day event entitled "Her Voice, Her Story".  This was a wonderful night and I enjoyed it immensely. Thank you so much to Suzanne Hill and the lovely staff at the Bremer Bay Community Resource Centre for the invitation and the delightful gifts.

I left a couple of BBQ packs for the boys (DS 2 was home for the night) with instructions to make a salad to have with it.

My tea was a delicious Chicken and Seafood Laksa from the Bremer Bay Resort. This was really delicious and had masses of seafood including a gigantic prawn on top and lovely coriander and benito coconut broth. It didn't need the chicken at all, the seafood was the star of this dish. At only $15.00, this was superb value for a meal that was incredibly filling (I couldn't eat it all!).

Saturday morning's breakfast was easy to choose, my favourite, Eggs Florentine. Two beautifully poached eggs on a bed of wilted spinach with lashings of smoked salmon. Served on English Muffins and with a (bought) Hollandaise. I don't understand why chefs use bought Hollandaise! It's so easy to make and keeps in the fridge for days.  Again, too much for me to eat, unfortunately.

On arriving home, I had to immediately turn on the oven and prepare a Chocolate Cake for tonight. The Bowling Club has a number of members and partners who have February birthdays, so the publican of the Pingrup Pub has invited us all to tea there tonight to celebrate en masse.  I offered to make the cake.
Then on to afternoon tea for Bowls as it's a home game today.

SUNDAY

Simple breakfast of Baked Beans with diced bacon and tomato on toast, get your own lunch and fish and salad for tea.