This is either a poor man’s Wellington, or a posh sausage roll, depending on how you look at it. The sausage filling is spiked with black pudding, enhanced with a savoury mushroom base and topped with caramelised onions. Wrapped in crisp, buttery ‘plaited’ pastry.

Ingredients:-

• 1 pack puff pastry

For the filling

• 300g/10½oz chestnut mushrooms, trimmed
• salt and pepper
• 2 tbsp thyme leaves
• 1 tbsp sunflower oil
• 25g/1oz unsalted butter
• 2 red onions, thinly sliced
• 2 tsp soft brown sugar
• 1 tbsp sherry vinegar
• 300g/10½oz top-quality sausagemeat (or skinned butcher’s sausages)
• 100g/3½oz black pudding, cut into 1–2cm/½-¾in pieces
• 1 free-range egg, lightly beaten, to glaze
• 1 tsp sesame seeds

Method:-

• Heat your oven to Gas Mark 6 and line a large, lipped baking tray with baking parchment (some butter may leak out of the pastry).
• Put the mushrooms in a food processor and season with salt and pepper. Pulse until the mushrooms are broken down to a rough paste. Add the thyme and give the mix a final pulse.
• Put the mushroom mixture into a dry frying pan on a medium-high heat and cook, stirring often, until all the moisture has evaporated from the mushrooms. Remove from the pan and leave to cool.
• Meanwhile, heat the oil and butter in a large frying pan over a medium-low heat. Add the onions with the sugar and cook slowly until they are very soft and sweet. This will take at least 20 minutes.
• Once caramelised, stir in the sherry vinegar.

• Roll out the pastry into a rectangle, about 26x30cm/10½x12in, and place on the prepared baking tray.
• Spread the mushroom paste down the central third of the pastry, leaving a 5cm/2in gap at the top and bottom.
• Mix the sausagemeat with the black pudding, mould into a long sausage shape that will fit on top of the mushroom paste and place it on the paste.
• Spread the caramelised onions on top of it.
• Cut 2cm/¾in strips all the way down the pastry on each side of the filling. Take one strip over the filling from one side, then one from the other and so on, crossing the strips over to form a plaited effect.
• Tuck the ends of the pastry under the plait, trimming off excess if necessary. Brush the plait with beaten egg and sprinkle with sesame seeds.
• Bake for 30 minutes or until the pastry is golden-brown.

• Leave to settle for 10 minutes or so, then serve hot or cold.
• This is delicious with a dollop of apple sauce on the side.