The Party Food That Made Me Feel At Home Here

My first proper catering job in this country was in 2014, a winter party in a cold hall with a hot water urn that took an hour to boil. I was the new cook. Nobody knew my name. Somebody put a tray down next to me, still warm, and said, “Go on, have one before they go.”

It was a sausage roll. My first one. I ate it standing up with my coat still on, and I remember thinking: this is the same idea as home. Good meat, seasoned properly, wrapped up so you can eat it with one hand while you talk to people. Back in Guadeloupe we do that with a bokit, with an accra, with a piece of boudin passed around a table. Different pastry, same generous heart.

Then I bit into the second one and I thought: this needs seasoning. Not more heat, nothing dramatic. Just waking up. Thyme, garlic, spring onion, a little allspice, the things my mother put into everything she made for seven of us. The sausage roll came to Britain from France anyway, from pâté en croûte, so as a French Caribbean man I feel I have every right to put my hands on it.

I have been making them my way ever since. Twelve years of parties, christenings, football afternoons, two Christmas caterings in a row where I made nothing else. These are the ones people follow me into the kitchen for. Let me show you.

Recipe at a glance

• Cuisine: Caribbean fusion (Guadeloupe meets Britain)
• Prep: 25 minutes • Cook: 25 minutes • Total: 50 minutes
• Serves: 8 (makes 24)
• Featured sauce: BBQ Sauce
• Heat level: 4/10, smoky and gentle, everybody can eat these
• Diet: Dairy free (check your pastry)

What you’ll need

Nothing here is hard to find. The one thing I will ask you for is decent sausagemeat, because that is the whole dish. If your butcher sells it loose, buy it there. If not, take good pork sausages and squeeze them out of their skins, which is what I did for years before I found my butcher.

The BBQ Sauce does two jobs in this recipe. Some goes into the meat, where it seasons and keeps everything moist. The rest goes on top at the end, while the pastry is still hot, so it sets into a sticky lacquer.

For the filling

• 700g pork sausagemeat (or 10 good pork sausages, skins removed)
• 4 tbsp Full Feast BBQ Sauce
• 4 spring onions, finely chopped
• 3 fat garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves, or 2 tsp dried
• 15g flat leaf parsley, finely chopped
• 1 tsp ground allspice
• Zest of 1 lime
• 60g fresh breadcrumbs
• 1 tsp fine sea salt
• ½ tsp freshly ground black pepper

For the pastry and the finish

• 2 x 320g sheets ready rolled puff pastry
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 tsp nigella seeds or sesame seeds (optional, but they look lovely)
• 3 tbsp Full Feast BBQ Sauce, for glazing
• More BBQ Sauce, warmed, for dipping

A note on the pastry: most ready rolled puff in British supermarkets is made with vegetable fat, which is why I can call these dairy free. Turn the packet over and check. If you want them richer, use all butter puff and they are no longer dairy free, and they are very good.

How I make it

1. Heat your oven to 200°C fan (220°C conventional). Line two baking trays with baking paper. Take the pastry out of the fridge about ten minutes before you need it, no longer, because warm pastry is a nuisance.

2. Put the sausagemeat in a big bowl. Add the spring onions, garlic, thyme, parsley, allspice, lime zest, breadcrumbs, the 4 tbsp of BBQ Sauce, the salt and the pepper.

3. Now mix with your hands. Really get in there, but only until everything is evenly through the meat. If you work it too long it goes tight and the rolls come out dense. Thirty seconds of proper mixing is plenty.

4. Fry a teaspoon of the mixture in a dry pan and taste it. I am serious about this one. You cannot season blind, and sausagemeat from two different shops will never be salted the same. Adjust and move on.

5. Unroll the first pastry sheet on its paper and cut it lengthways into two long strips. Do the same with the second sheet. You now have four strips.

6. Divide the filling into four. Roll each portion into a long sausage with wet hands and lay it down one side of a strip, leaving a couple of centimetres of pastry free along the edge nearest you.

7. Brush that free edge with beaten egg. Roll the pastry over the meat, press the seam down firmly with a fork, and turn each log seam side down. Sealed seam underneath, always. This is what stops them bursting.

8. Slide the logs onto a tray and chill them for 20 minutes. I know you want to skip this part. Do not skip this part. Cold pastry going into a hot oven is what gives you those flaky layers instead of a sad flat thing.

9. Cut each log into six, so you have 24. Space them out on the trays, slash the tops three times with a small knife, brush with the rest of the egg and scatter over the seeds. Bake for 25 minutes, until they are deep gold and the bottoms are crisp when you lift one.

10. The moment they come out, warm the 3 tbsp of BBQ Sauce for a few seconds and brush it over the hot tops. It hisses, it goes glossy, it smells like Sunday. Rest them for five minutes so nobody burns their mouth, then put them on the table with a bowl of warm BBQ Sauce beside them.

The role of BBQ Sauce in these sausage rolls

Sausagemeat on its own is fatty and a bit flat. It wants sweetness, it wants acidity, and it wants something smoky to give it a backbone. That is exactly what our BBQ Sauce carries, so instead of reaching for four different jars you stir in one.

Inside the filling it works quietly. You will not taste it and think “barbecue sauce”. You will taste pork that has been seasoned by somebody who cares, with a dark sweetness underneath the thyme and the allspice. It also holds moisture, so the meat stays juicy through 25 minutes in a hot oven rather than shrinking away from the pastry.

On top it does the opposite, it shows off. Brushed on while the pastry is still hot, it tightens into a sticky, glossy skin that catches the light. And in the bowl beside the tray it is just itself, smoky and rich, for the people who dip everything.

It is vegan in the jar, though the pastry and the pork here are neither, so save that fact for a different conversation.

Tips from my kitchen

• Cold pastry, hot oven. If your kitchen is warm and the logs feel soft at any point, put them back in the fridge for ten minutes. Nothing is lost. Everything is gained.

• Seam side down, every time. A seam on top will open in the oven and the filling will run out, and then you are standing there at seven o’clock with twenty four disappointments.

• Make them small. Party food should be two bites. A big sausage roll is a meal and people take one out of politeness. A small one, they take four and they are happy.

• Bottom shelf if the bottoms go pale. Ovens all lie in their own way. Mine runs cool underneath, so I move the trays down for the last five minutes and the bases come out crisp.

• Season, taste, then season again. My mother never once cooked something without tasting it first, and she was feeding seven children with no room to get it wrong.

What to serve it with

At a party I put the tray in the middle of the table and let it happen. If you want to build a proper spread around them, a sharp cabbage slaw cuts the richness better than anything, and something pickled on the side keeps people going back.

For the ones who ask if you have anything hotter, and there is always one, put a bottle of Caribbean Hot Sauce on the table next to the dipping bowl and let them decide their own fate. If you are feeding a mixed crowd, the Spicy Discovery Trio lets everyone find their own level, and it makes a good thing to hand over when you arrive at somebody else’s party. You will find the rest of the range over in the shop, and the bundles if you are stocking up before the season starts.

Cold beer. Cold ginger beer for the driving. That is the whole plan.

FAQ

Can I make sausage rolls ahead of time?

Yes, and I nearly always do. Roll the logs, seal them, wrap them and keep them in the fridge for up to two days. Cut and bake them straight from cold on the day, and add two or three minutes to the baking time. Party food you finish in the morning is party food you actually get to enjoy.

Can I freeze them?

They freeze better than almost anything else I make. Freeze them raw, cut and spaced out on a tray, then bag them once solid. Bake from frozen at 200°C fan for about 32 to 35 minutes. Do not thaw them first, they go soggy and you lose the layers.

What sausagemeat should I use?

Ask your butcher for coarse pork sausagemeat with a decent amount of fat, around 20 percent. Lean meat gives you a dry roll. If you are buying sausages instead, choose ones with a high pork content and slit the skins with a knife rather than fighting them.

Are these very spicy?

No. Our BBQ Sauce sits around 4 out of 10, and once it is through 700g of pork it is much gentler than that. Children eat these happily. If you want proper heat, swap the BBQ Sauce for Flaming BBQ Sauce in the filling and glaze, same quantities, and tell people before they pick one up.

Why did my sausage rolls go soggy underneath?

Two usual reasons. The trays were crowded, so the rolls steamed instead of baking, or the filling was too wet. Give each one room to breathe, and if your mixture looks loose, add another 20g of breadcrumbs before you roll.

Final word from me

Make these for the next thing you have on. A birthday, a Sunday, a Tuesday when people are coming round and you cannot be bothered with plates. Put the tray down in the middle, stand back, and watch how fast a room warms up when there is something hot to share.

That is what my mother’s kitchen taught me, and it is what a British party taught me too, twelve years ago, in a cold hall with a slow urn. Same lesson, different pastry.

Cook them, and tell me how they went.

JP