When fellow food blogger The Littlest Anchovy asked if I’d be interested in trying some artisan pork & cider sausages from Borenore in regional New South Wales, I politely jumped at the chance. Not so much being excited about some English-style sausages but for the fact that Anna asked if I’d like to come up with a method to used them in a joint post.

Sausages are sausages and the nature of them almost limits what can be done when it’s time to cook. Throw them on a barbie? Slap them in a bread roll with tomato sauce? Cook them up with mash and gravy? As much as I love any of those I had to look beyond the conventional methods and try something a little unconventional, thanks to some inspiration from Kiwi chef Peter Gordon.

These little fritters are beyond easy to make and are perfect for a dinner party starter or tasty finger food at your next cocktail party. The beetroot pesto can be made a day in advance and the fritters can even be assembled and refrigerated overnight so that all you need to do is cook and serve. Any left-over pesto is great with grilled chicken or duck, on crackers or even a mezze platter.

For more info on the sausages and where they come from take a look at Anna’s interview from when she visited Small Acres Cyder. Personally I found these sausages very dry as all they contained was cider-marinated meat and not much more. If you try this recipe and can’t get your hands on pork & cider snags, grab some other quality sausages of your choice and they’ll do fine.

lime leaf wrapped pork + cider fritters with beetroot + apple pesto

Makes 8-10

• 3 pork & cider sausages
• 1 tbsp parsley, roughly chopped
• kaffir lime leaves (double leaves), soaked in hot tap water for 15 minutes
• Vege oil, to cook

Remove the meat from the sausage, mix in the chopped parsley and shape into tablespoon-sized mounds about the size of the larger half of the kaffir lime leaf.

Place the mound of meat onto the larger half of the lime leaf and gently curl the other half over and press down to secure. Refrigerate for at least an hour before cooking.

Heat the vege oil (about 1 cm deep) in a frying pan over low-medium heat. Gently cook each fritter until golden brown, turning halfway through to cook the other side. Make sure the oil isn’t too hot otherwise the leaf will burn before the meat is cooked through.

Drain on paper and serve immediately topped with beetroot pesto.

For the pesto:

• 1 medium beetroot
• 1 red apple, peeled, cored & cut into quarters
• 1 small clove garlic, grated
• 2½ tbsp pinenuts, toasted
• 30 g parmesan
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tbsp hazelnut oil
• A few leaves of parsley

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Wrap the beetroot in foil and bake on a tray for 40 minutes.

Once the beetroot has been in the oven for 40 minutes arrange the apple on the same tray. Cook for a further 50 minutes.

When the beetroot is cooked, remove the skin and cut into chunks and place into a food processor along with the cooked apple and remaining pesto ingredients. Process until smooth.

Tagged as: Apple, Beetroot, Mod Oz, Pork