Sausage rolls with sage and apricots

The beach between Embleton and Newton was windy and cold but beautiful this weekend, especially with all my close friends... I went on a hen do, but not an awful one, a lovely one in a pretty little Hall, in the wilds of Northumberland near Newton by the Sea. We went for long walks by the sea, a tour of Bamburgh Castle and pub lunches. There was also dancing round the hall in bad bridesmaid dresses till the early hours of the morning, lots of wine, lovely food and general all round hilarity.

I had planned a picnic for lunch at the exact time that a cold wind started, a bit of rain and black menacing clouds rolled in. So we had to improvise by picnicking indoors... Everyone had made different delicious things, my contribution were these sausage rolls...

Finely chop a small red onion and start to cook it gently in a bit of olive oil and a pinch of salt until it is really soft. Finely dice a handful of dried apricots and add these to the onion and cook for a few more minutes.

While these are cooking finely chop six or so sage leaves and the leaves of a few sprigs of thyme. All these amounts are pretty rough as you are just adding as little or as much flavour to the sausage meat as you choose. Add the herbs, onion and apricots to about 450g of sausage meat with some salt and pepper and mix it all together with your hands.

Roll out some puff pastry, I used one sheet of the shop bought frozen stuff as time was of the essence... I had a drive North to get on with. Cut the sheet into two long strips and put sausage meat all down the centre of each. Finally roll the pastry over the sausage and squidge the edges down with a fork. Cut into whatever size you would like them to be.

I brushed the top of each of them with a beaten egg and put them in the oven for 25 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius. Keep checking them as you would be devastated if they burnt...