Beef & Blue Cheese Sausage Rolls With Dijon

These Beef and Blue Cheese sausage rolls are really like if a sausage roll paired with a cheese plate. With a beef mince base, they are combined with quince paste, blue cheese and walnuts for a delicious sausage roll that is a bit different to the usual and yet is moreishly good! Serve it with truffle mustard for a special treat!

Normally I would have said that these are really adult flavoured sausage rolls but I hear from a lot of parents about how adventurous their kids are and how they love sushi, blue cheese and olives so I think kids nowadays have a more adventurous palate. In any case, if you love sausage rolls and blue cheese then I think you may really enjoy these. I left an enormous box of these for Mr NQN while I went away for a recent girl's weekend with my sometime vegetarian friend Laura.

We flew to Albury and ate ourselves silly. Laura can easily match me for both enthusiasm and eating and like me, she's quite extra. We will both say yes to most things and that means that we share a wicked sense of humour, energy and enthusiasm for all things.

We had a couple of hour-long drives so being Thelma and Louise (without the car going off the cliff), we connected Laura's spotify and blasted music at such a volume that delighted me as Mr NQN never lets me play it that loud.

The subject in the car turned to men, as it always tends to, and Laura lamented that there was no longer love like 80's love song lyric love. So we switched the playlist to 80's love songs and played dramatic tear jerkers as "Against All Odds" and "Take My Breath Away" and as we arrived back in Albury as we were both belting out "The Power of Love" at the top of our lungs.

We parked on the main street of Albury and I got out of the car and our music filled the whole street. There were four dogs sitting outside of a pub and they started howling and barking and I was laughing too hard to tell Laura to turn it down (honestly, you don't know how loud it is until you get out of the car!). People stared, the pooches continued to howl and Laura pressed the volume buttons furiously but as it was a rental it took a bit longer than usual to find the right buttons. I'm sure people were shaking their head in pity at our poor choice of a road trip song and in the end we just had to embrace it. Hello world, yes we are crazy!

So tell me Dear Reader, do you like the idea of this sausage roll? And do you play car music at ear splitting volume or are you more restrained? Do you sing in the car?

Beef & Blue Cheese Sausage Rolls With Dijon Mustard

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Preparation time: 20 minutes

Cooking time: 40 minutes

• 500g/1.1lbs beef mince
• 1 egg
• 100g/3.5ozs blue cheese (use your favourite one)
• 150g/5ozs. quince or fig paste
• 1/2 cup walnuts, roasted and chopped
• 2 teaspoons onion powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 3 sheets puff pastry
• 1 egg mixed with 1 tablespoon water or milk for egg glaze
• Dijon mustard to serve

Note: I also used a jalapeno chilli but that's because I wanted to use it up as I was going away.

Step 1 - Preheat oven to 220C/440F and line 2 baking trays with parchment. Process the egg, blue cheese and fruit paste in a food processor. Mix well with the beef mince, walnuts, onion powder, salt and pepper.

Step 2 - Divide each square sheet of puff pastry into half and divide the mince mixture among the six rectangles making a sausage shape in the centre. Brush each side with egg yolk and then roll up and seal. Place on lined tray seam side down.

Step 3 - Sprinkle with seeds or I did a rough slashing technique too. Bake for 35-40 minutes or until golden. Serve with Dijon mustard (seriously, it works so well with Dijon!).