cheese and bacon pinwheels

i've always loved baking and have never discriminated between sweet and savoury. so when i discovered a french bakery in chatswood some 30 years ago (a pioneer of its time) which had these savoury ham and cheese pastries, i thought i would replicate them; not only did i replicate them, i came up with different variations. this was the simplest.

1 sheet of puff pastry
1 cup grated cheese
1 rasher bacon, diced

line a baking tray with baking paper.
place the puff pastry on your workbench and sprinkle with the cheese and bacon. roll up the puff pastry as if you were making a swiss roll, removing the plastic from the puff pastry as you go, but not all the way - leave the last bit of pastry stuck to the plastic and use the plastic to enclose the roll. place the roll in the fridge for about 30 minutes to firm up; the plastic will protect the pastry from drying out too much.
preheat the oven to 200 degrees celcius.
remove the roll from the fridge when firm, discard plastic and cut into slices about 1 centimetre thick and place on the baking tray. ensure the oven has come to the right temperature, and bake for 20 minutes or until golden and bubbly.

very often i like using low fat extra tasty cheese to make these as regular cheese can be greasy and messy. i do emphasise the extra tasty intentionally as low fat cheese is sometimes lacking in flavour. if you should choose the low fat way to go, try to serve the pinwheels warm as low fat cheese cooled/cold isn't too palatable, either. choose your trade off.

sausage rolls

i don't think of this as a bona fide sausage roll recipe, and you probably won't either once you read through this, but everyone asks me for the "recipe". i suspect that it's because in their simplicity, these sausage rolls are very good. and very easy.

2 sheets ready rolled puff pastry
6 thin sausages

preheat the oven to 200 degrees celcius.
cut the pastry into nine squares.
cut each of the sausages into three.
wrap each sausage third with a square of pastry and place on a baking sheet lined with baking paper, with the join at the bottom.
when you've finished wrapping all the sausages with pastry, bake them for 20 minutes, or until golden.
serve with tomato sauce.

i have tried using posh sausages to make these, but really, if your butcher makes nice regular sausages, they'll be very good already. at any rate, they be tons better than anything you'd find ready made at the shops, fresh or frozen, and much less fatty.

spring onion pancakes

these are by no means the authentic spring onion pancakes popular in pekingese restaurants and in taiwan. these are my cheat/desparation spring onion pancakes. i wanted to make the authentic ones from scratch, but my dough didn't work out, so i came up with this, which isn't bad and a great way of using up scraps of puff pastry and spring onion.

1 bunch spring onions, chopped
ready rolled puff pastry sheets
salt
oil, extra

cut a pastry sheet in four squares. sprinkle some of the spring onion on a quarter piece of pastry. sprinkle with salt. place another quarter square of pastry on top and roll the two pieces of pastry together to created a thin "pancake".
heat a frypan with a little oil and carefully place the prepared pastry in the pan. fry until crisp and golden on one side and flip with a spatula to crisp the other side.
serve cut in wedges.