Veggie Couscous Sausage Rolls with Smashed Tomato Sauce

I love a no recipe recipe and sometimes I love a recipe. Do you follow?

I mean, there’s room in your life for both and there’s room for your flair in the kitchen too! Even while you’re leaning new skills.

If you’ve been around here for a while, you know I believe everyone can cook. It’s the confidence piece that is lacking. The confidence to realise you don’t have breadcrumbs (like I didn’t today) and the confidence to look left and right in your fridge/pantry to see what is a viable substitute. This muscle definitely grows over time but you don’t get to start and have everything work out. There will be failures and it’s within these failures we can learn the most about where our creative thoughts were a little ambitious or extra presence is required while we’re cooking. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

Here I was today with the hankering for some sausage rolls and no breadcrumbs, which are a solid go-to for my sausage roll filling. I had some leftover couscous in the fridge and the rest is history, it worked!

Back to the no recipe recipe. Sausage rolls are very much in this category. If you keep the filling quantity around about the same amount, you’re good to go. You could add any leftovers you have instead of your breadcrumbs: rice, quinoa, pasta, rice noodles, a few oats, beans, chickpeas.

Veggie Couscous Sausage Rolls with Smashed Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

• 4 sheets puff pastry

• 1 onion, diced

• 4 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped

• 1 medium zucchini, diced

• 1/2 cup cooked spinach

• 3/4 cup couscous (or breadcrumbs)

• 200g feta

• 1 tbsp ground cumin

• Salt

• Pepper

• 1 egg

• Fennel seeds

• 200g truss tomatoes

• Extra virgin olive oil

Method

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees C.

2. Remove puff pastry from freezer and allow to thaw – you still want it cold, as it will be easier to handle and cook.

3. Line a baking tray with baking paper.

4. Grab a bowl and add onion to salt and pepper. Mix well to combine.

5. Lay out pastry sheets and slice in half lengthways.

6. Use a spoon or your hands to lay mixture on top of pastry in centre.

7. Roll up pastry into a cylinder and place in baking tray. Continue with all pastry.

8. Use a knife to cut rolls into quarters or the size you’d like.

9. Whisk egg in a bowl and brush pastry tops with egg mix.

10. Sprinkle with fennel seeds.

11. Place in oven and bake for 20 – 30 minutes or until crispy brown on top.

12. On a separate tray, place tomatoes and coat with olive oil, salt and pepper. Place in oven and cook for 20 minutes, or until done.

13. Remove tomatoes from tray into a bowl and gently mash with a fork. If you have some herbs, add them in too.