Best of British Sausage and Apple Tart and Stuffing Meatballs

Following on to some of my earlier posts, I am now excited to bring you a couple of Christmas inspired recipes made using some lovely festive ingredients sent to me by Forman and Field’s, on behalf of knorr.   

Sometime back in November I was very lucky to receive a whole hamper full of goodies including everything to make a big Christmas dinner, including a giant Kelly Bronze Turkey, carrots, parsnips, chestnuts and more! With the various goodies I made a variety of dishes including this winter warming Turkey and Barley stew (which was so good I am making it again tomorrow for dinner!) 

One of the ingredients in my hamper was a container of 'Cranberry, walnut & smoked bacon stuffing'. Therein came my first challenge!

Hmm what to do with stuffing, other than well basically putting it up mr turkeys bottom? Whilst the  stuffing was good, it was also very different to others I've had. In fact it was a more like a very coarsely minced meat mixture, compared to the rather smooth sausagemeat I normally buy from the butchers. It was also nothing like the paxo type. Before playing with it, I decided to quickly cook a weeny bit of it to test the flavouring. However I then also burnt my tongue in the process which once again taught me the hard way to have some patience and let things cool first! It needed a little more seasoning but provided a good base, with lots of texture.

I decided some kind of tart was in order and decided to play around with the pastry and came with this rather cute looking gb flag:

As I had best of british ingredients, so I thought a Union Jack flag was quite fitting! However I am so used to cooking previously for two, the results were rather large but it did result in me having a lunch that had admirers the next day at work! I am very lucky working with people from all over the world; we have some very interesting food chats and smells in our staffroom! 

Best of British Sausage and Apple Tart

Makes two large tarts - serves 4

Easy

300g good quality sausagemeat stuffing

300g fresh puff pastry (roughly 2/3 of a block)

1 cox apple, thinly sliced

1 tsp English mustard powder, made up with 1 tsp water

Beaten egg to glaze (or egg spray)

Pre-heat oven to 180 fan/ 200 regular

Roll out the puff pastry until its the thickness of a pound coin, cut into half lengthways. Then cut a 4cm strip off each rectangle. Cut this bit into four thin strips lenghthways

Score a line about 1cm from the edge of each big rectangle, then fill this gap with the stuffing, to form a thin layer. Covered with the apple slices, and glaze with mustard mixture. 

Now take two of the reserved strips and carefully stretch them and place over the two longest areas of your flag, lightly egg glaze the overlapping parts to stick. Use the two shorter strips to complete the flag. Glaze all over with the beaten and, place on a lined baking tray. Repeat for the other block of pastry to give you two tarts, then bake for 40 minutes or until its cooked through. 

When cooked through, cut into half and serve with seasonal vegetables - I went with my favourite Brussels sprouts:

Whilst the recipe was very successful, I think next time will make four smaller flags as you lose some of the flag effect by cutting in half.

Enjoy!

Stuffing Meatballs:

Whilst with the remaining stuffing, I made a tray of little meatballs. These would be ideal as a canapé as part of a festive buffet, however I must point out that they also do very well as an emergency breakfast when you’ve slept through your alarm and grabbed the first thing that looks edible from the fridge!

I made them by mixing 200g of the stuffing, with a couple of tbsp of apple sauce (shh from a jar!), rolled it into small walnut sized balls, rolled them in fairly coarse dried breadcrumbs and then baked them for around 25 minutes.

 They had both a good meaty flavour and texture, a dish I will definitely make again.