December 7, 2008: Vegan sausage rolls

   

I've been devoted to Liz O'Brien's recipe for vegetarian 'sausage' rolls longer than I've been vegetarian. Not only are they guaranteed gristle-free, but they taste as good as real sausage rolls (perhaps better!) and only require ingredients that you can find readily in a supermarket. I've cooked them for birthdays and Christmas and for cold, solitary winter nights on the couch. This recipe, my friends, is forever.

... except for my new lil' discovery. With one or two substitutions, you can make vegan sausage rolls that taste just as motherlovin' awesome! Toss the cottage cheese and eggs, and mash up a block of silken tofu - that's it. The raw filling has a distinctive whiff of soy, but there's not a trace of it once baked. These are the salty, flaky sauce vessels of your dreams.

If you compare the recipe below to the original version, you'll notice I've made a couple of other tweaks for convenience over the years. Perhaps you will too - the filling seems most forgiving.


Vegan sausage rolls

125g pecans
stale bread to make ~1/2 cup breadcrumbs
1 onion
300g silken tofu
1 cup rolled oats
1 Massel beef-style stock cube
1 teaspoon garlic powder
3 tablespoons soy sauce (you can use less - the end result will be less salty and brown, and therefore less resemble a 'real' sausage roll)
ground pepper, to taste
3-4 frozen puff pastry sheets (~25cm square, Borg's is vegan)
water or vegan milk for brushing pastry
sesame seeds

My preferred way of prepping this filling makes maximum use of my food processor. If you don't have one, chopping and mashing will do the job just fine. Start by processing the pecans until they're thoroughly chopped, but not all gone to powder. Tip them into a large mixing bowl, then toss the bread into the food processor and whizz it until it's crumbs. Toss the crumbs in with the pecans and move onto the onion. Chop it into 8 chunks and process them briefly until they've a 'finely chopped' kinda texture. Add them to the mixing bowl, and finally whizz up the tofu until it's a smooth mush. Add it to the mixing bowl, as well as the rest of the filling ingredients: rolled oats, a crumbled-up stock cube, garlic powder, soy sauce and pepper. Stir everything together well.

Now preheat the oven to 200 degrees C and lightly grease a baking tray. Thaw out your puff pastry, and slice each sheet in half so that it makes two rectangles. Spoon the filling down the centre third of each pastry rectangle; lightly brush another third with water or milk and then roll the pastry, starting from the empty third and tucking it into the brushed third. Slice the roll into halves, thirds or quarters as you wish and place them on the baking tray. Make a couple more diagonal cuts in the top of the roll, brush the top with more water/milk and sprinkle over some sesame seeds. Repeat with the remaining filling and pastry. Bake the rolls for about 20 minutes, until they're golden brown and flaky. Serve with lots of sauce - this one comes highly recommended.