This is always a safe standby if you’ve got friends coming around at short notice (or, as proved the case this Christmas, you’re short on time). It’s cheap, easy to make and tasty. It’s also easily adapted for vegetarians by swapping out the pork sausage meat for vegetarian sausages, which can be sliced before being laid onto the pastry for cooking.

This meal freezes well. Ensure it is fully defrosted before re-heating.

Method
Dice the onions and fry them in a little oil. Be careful not to let them burn: just cook them through until they start to go a little transparent. When cooked, dry them off on kitchen paper and put them to one side.

Heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius (390 degrees Fahrenheit) and allow to get up to temperature. Meanwhile, unroll one sheet of puff pastry and lay on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper. If you don’t have greaseproof paper, you can grease the tray and put the pastry directly onto it, although this is less healthy and more likely to stick, leaving you with more washing up.

Scatter the fried onions on the pastry and then roll out the sausage meat to cover them. Ensure you leave a margin of at least 2cm (three quarters of an inch) around all sides, and then lightly brush the exposed pastry edges with milk. They shouldn’t be wet – just damp. Lay your second sheet of pastry over the sausage meat and crimp it onto the milked edges of the bottom sheet.

Cut three long slits in the lid of the plait to allow air to escape during cooking, and brush with beaten egg so that it browns in the oven.

When your oven is up to temperature, cook for 30 minutes, or until the sausage meat is thoroughly cooked, by following the instructions on the meat packaging.

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