It's picnic season! How to cook my coveted sausage rolls & prepare the ultimate summer picnic...

With Glorious Goodwood just around the corner, I thought what better time to let you all in on my ultimate picnic set up! Featuring the recipe for my now coveted sausage rolls, and the delicious food that makes it into my standard picnic line up.

Whilst we’re talking picnics I must tell you about one of the very best items we have for such occasions - in fact, we love it so much we bought two! One for drinks and one for the food. It is the Igloo Maxcold Island Breeze, and it is fantastic for storing food and drink and keeping it super fresh and tasting perfect! We absolutely swear by ours!

Now let’s get onto the good stuff - what goes into one of my picnics…

Savoury

Chicken breasts stuffed with asparagus, mozzarella and pesto, wrapped in parma ham.

These are perfect as when sliced, you can eat them with your fingers or just a fork. Picnics are social occasions, you don’t want huge pieces of food as you’ll be unable to converse with anybody! It’s also often rather awkward to use both a knife and a fork at a picnic.

Beef fillet sliced thin and served with rocket and parmesan.

We like ours quite rare, but the great thing about beef fillet is that normally the ends are more well done than the centre, so you can please everybody.

I like to serve mine with red wine, shallot and creme fraiche sauce on the side.

Quinoa salad with pomegranate, red onion, cucumber and basil with an apple cider vinegar dressing.

This keeps very well in the fridge, so can be made a little while beforehand.

Potato salad with chives

A picnic classic!

Quiche

I normally take a either a Roasted Mediterranean Quiche, the recipe for which can be found by clicking here or visiting the ‘Cooking’ category of this website, or one of my Quiche Lorraines, which you can find inside my Family Meal Guide over on my Teachable page!

Sausage Rolls

Scroll down for the recipe for these! They get devoured in seconds and I always, always make sure I make plenty! They freeze so well too, so it’s great to make spares.

Sweet

Chocolatey Biscuit Bites

So delicious, melt in your mouth and a little bit naughty! These always go down a storm.

Mixed Berries

I use strawberry, raspberry and blueberry and they always work so well together. So refreshing on a hot summers day.

Meringues

I’ve been making meringues since I was a child, they keep for a long time too so can be made well in advance.

Now for the best bit - here is my sausage roll recipe!

Sausage Rolls

Ingredients

500g Sausage Meat

1 red onion finely sliced

4 sprigs of thyme leaves only chopped

2 x 320g Ready Rolled puff pastry (all butter)

1 egg beaten

Method

Place the sausage meat, sliced red onion and thyme into a mixing bowl and mix well together. (I use my hands)

Lay the pastry out and slice it down the middle lengthways

Roll the sausage meat into 1-2 cm thick sausage shape!

Place it onto the pastry half, in the middle, brush one edge with the beaten egg and roll the pastry over the sausage meat and stick the egg side to the rolled pastry.

Repeat this with the rest of the sausage meat, then gently score the top of the pastry with a sharp knife and brush with the beaten egg.

Chop into 2” pieces (I use sharp kitchen scissors) and place on a lined baking tray.

Bake in the roasting oven of the Aga for 10-15 mins until golden in colour or use an electric oven at 180C for 10-15 mins

These freeze very well.

I hope you all enjoy!

Love,