Christmas Kitchen: Giant Garland Sausage Roll with Quails Eggs

This weekend, I willingly sat down to watch a sporting event on the television. While I still don’t understand people who obsessively follow football, or cricket, or rugby, it turns out once I’d had all the rules and the science behind different pit stop timings and tyre types explained to me by J’s F1-loving family, there was something as to the strategy of the race that really spoke to me and so I can wholeheartedly say I really enjoyed the final – controversial – race of the Grand Prix just as much as the buffet lunch we were enjoying whilst we watched, including my contribution of a Giant Garland Sausage Roll with Quails Eggs (I also made my Chocolate Truffle Bundt Cake for afters!)

From our family recipe box it has traditionally become a Boxing Day recipe for us, something for sharing, but honestly I think it is perfect for any ‘everyone helps themselves’ family gathering this season. Made with seasoned sausage meat and studded with hard boiled quails eggs, serve it in different sized slices so that everyone can help themselves (with some of my Shredded Brussels Sprouts Caesar Salad on the side, obviously!)

This version is adapted to make a half size version of the original, which, alongside roast chicken and a slow cooker full of pulled pork on the side (I helped J’s mum do this recipe the night before which I can really recommend if you’re looking for something a bit different than my Slow Cooker Barbecue Pulled Pork) which still yielded loads of leftovers. The full size version is written out in my Mum’s impossibly neat handwriting without accreditation, but we all seem to agree it was originally a Nigella recipe, and because it has been written out to keep, it must have originated from a food magazine over the years. But here it is, because this recipe is too good to be lost to the archives.

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Giant Garland Sausage Roll with Quails Eggs

• Author: Rachel Phipps
• Prep Time: 20 minutes
• Cook Time: 40 minutes
• Total Time: 1 hour
• Yield: 8–10 1x
• Category: Lunch
• Cuisine: British

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Description

This Giant Garland Sausage Roll, studded with quails eggs is perfect to slice and share at family gatherings over the holidays, best served at room temperature. 

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Ingredients

Scale 1x2x3x

• 350g (12 1/4 oz) cumberland sausage meat
• 25g (3/34 oz) panko breadcrumbs
• 1/2 small onion
• small handful flat leaf parsley
• generous few shakes Tabasco
• 1 slice of thick cut ham (great if you’d made your own ham!)
• plain (all purpose) flour, for rolling
• 300g (10 oz) puff pastry (about 2/3 of a block, use the leftovers here)
• 1 large egg
• 9–10 hard boiled quails eggs (see note)
• flaky sea salt

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Instructions

1. Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees (390 farenheit).
2. In a large bowl, combine the sausage meat, breadcrumbs, the onion, grated, the flat leaf parsley, finely chopped, the Tabasco, and the ham, also finely chopped. With your hands, bring everything together until the seasonings are equally distributed throughout the sausage meat.
3. On a clean, lightly floured surface, roll out the pastry sheet into a rectangle just smaller than a regular sized baking tray, which at this point you should line with greaseproof paper. Beat the egg and using a pastry brush, brush the entire surface of the pastry sheet.
4. Shape 2/3 of your sausage meat into a sausage the length of the longest edge of the pastry sheet, leaving about 2-3 cm at each end for sealing. Place it down in the middle of one portrait half of the sheet and press it down lightly. 
5. Using a finger, create a well down the middle of the sausage meat and place the quails eggs in a tight row down the middle into this trench. Use the remaining sausage meat to seal the top so that the quails eggs are snug inside.
6. Fold the pastry over the sausage meat so they’re sealed into a large sausage roll; the egg wash should help the pastry stick to the sausage meat, but do press out as many air bubbles as you can. Using a sharp knife, trim the roll into a neat rectangle and use a fork to seal the edges (see pictures).
7. Brush with the remaining egg wash and sprinkle the top with sea salt before baking for 35-40 minutes until the pastry is puffy and golden. 
8. Allow the garland roll to at least cool to ‘just warm’ before slicing to get nice, clean slices. 

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Notes

I buy Clarence Court’s hard boiled quails eggs for this recipe as I hate peeling them! But, if you wish to hard boil them yourself, boil them for 2 1/2 minutes before plunging them into ice water and peeling them as soon as they’re cool enough to handle. 

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