Recipe of the Month: Vegan "Sausage" Rolls

Until yesterday, I thought I'd have to use Brian's homemade tortillas as my Recipe of the Month. They're definitely not the kind of veggie-centric recipe I had in mind when I first came up with the idea, but May has been so busy that we just haven't had a chance to try new dishes. But yesterday, with the day off for Memorial Day, Brian decided to surprise me with a new dish that definitely fits the bill: Vegan "Sausage" Rolls. The "sausage" is in quotes because honestly, there's nothing particularly sausage-like about it. But it is tasty all the same.

I found this recipe in a rather indirect way. Now that the weather is warm enough for grilling, I was thinking about what we could put on the grill besides veggies. Grilled eggplant, peppers, and zucchini are all lovely, but they're not that substantial by themselves. So I was searching for a reasonable meatless sausage. Nowadays, companies like Beyond Meat are making vegan sausage links that are apparently quite decent, but they're generally either Italian sausage or a bratwurst that, according to Brian, tastes nothing like any of the three kinds of sausage that can be labeled as bratwurst. What I wanted was something more along the lines of the kielbasa we used to buy at the Amish market. Several sites I consulted recommended Field Roast, but we've tried those before and they're not suitable for grilling. (They don't have a real casing, just a piece of plastic you have to cut off the links before cooking them, so they don't hold together.) And other highly recommended brands like Future Farm and THIS don't appear to be available in the U.S.

So I concluded if we wanted sausages for grilling, we'd have to make our own. We've attempted this before and it wasn't a great success, but I thought maybe it would work better with a different recipe. So I started hunting around, and I happened on a site called BGang (don't ask me why) with a recipe for what it called "Vegan Sausage Rolls." Upon examining it, I found that these weren't anything you could throw on the grill; they were more like little turnovers with a blend of tofu, mushrooms, and seasonings wrapped in puff pastry. But they looked like they might be pretty good anyway, so I printed out the recipe for future use.

I assumed when I found this recipe that we'd have to wait to try it until we could get our hands on some vegan puff pastry. According to this site, at least one well-known brand, Pepperidge Farm, is made without butter or eggs, so I figured we'd just grab a pack next time we were at Shop-Rite. But Brian was more ambitious than I was. He decided to go all out and make his own puff pastry with our new homemade plant butter. 

He made a half batch of the recipe from From the Comfort of My Bowl, but he had to modify it slightly. It called for plant butter in stick form, which was supposed to be frozen, grated, and then frozen again. But our homemade plant butter melts so easily that Brian knew even if he froze it first, it would melt if he tried to grate it. So he just scooped it into a bowl, cut it up as best he could with the pastry cutter, and froze that. Luckily the recipe listed all the ingredients by weight rather than volume, so he didn't have to figure out what volume of our light, whipped plant butter was equivalent to a stick.

We'd seen puff pastry made many times on "The Great British Bake-Off," so Brian knew more or less how to do it. You have to make the dough, then roll it out flat, layer on the shredded butter, and fold it in thirds (what the Great British Bakers call a "book fold"). Then you rotate it 90 degrees, roll it out again, add more butter, fold it the same way, and chill it for at least an hour. After that, you repeat the rolling-and-folding process twice more and chill it yet again. All this is supposed to create layers within the dough so it will have a flaky texture when baked. The recipe said you only had to go through the roll-fold-chill process twice, but you could choose to do it a third time to maximize the flakiness. Brian decided to take this option to give our vegan butter its best possible chance.

Once the dough had finished its final chilling step, Brian started work on the filling. This was much simpler than making the dough. The only thing that had to be done in advance was making a "flax egg"—ground flaxseed mixed with hot water—to serve as both a binder for the filling and a glaze for the pastry. Then he just had to grind up and saute the onion, garlic, and mushrooms and combine them with all the remaining ingredients: crumbled tofu, flax egg, oats, nutritional yeast, and seasonings. We didn't have the chives the recipe called for, so he used a tablespoon of chopped green onion instead. He also cut the salt down to a teaspoon and used only a pinch each of black pepper and red pepper flakes to give it just a hint of spice. Then he rolled out his homemade puff pastry, cut it into squares, filled them, loaded them with the filling, and folded them up. A quick brush with the remaining flax egg and a sprinkle of poppy seeds, and they were ready for the oven.

The finished turnovers weren't perfect. Despite all Brian's efforts, the pastry had not laminated noticeably. But it was still crisp and light, making a nice container for the delicately flavored filling. I was glad Brian hadn't used the full amount of spice, as even a pinch of red pepper flakes was quite enough for my sensitive taste buds. On the other hand, I thought using the full amount of salt—and perhaps a bit more of the umami flavors, like garlic and nutritional yeast—probably wouldn't have hurt it. But I still happily polished off two of the rolls, while Brian had two and a half (two full-sized rolls plus the itty-bitty one on the edge of the tray). Along with a small green salad from our own homegrown lettuce, topped with walnuts and a few of our honeyberries, it made a satisfying meal.

Although these were pretty good, I'm not sure they were good enough to justify all the hassle of making them. Making puff pastry from scratch is all very well as an experiment, but it's very time-consuming. If Brian enjoyed the challenge enough to want to make these again, of course I'll be happy to eat them. But as vegan recipes go, we know loads of others that are at least as good and a lot less work.