January Pie of the Month - The Sausage Roll

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Traditional and best, these beauties sell every day.... every day we make them fresh that is.  People just cannot resist them even when they do not know what is in them.  Our recipe is a simple as it gets with just a few tricks of the trade applied here and there. 

We do other varieties that are popular.  The Thai dish is very popular as are indian kebabs.  More traditional but arty are the additions of apple sauce, mustard mixes etc, but again, there is nothing like the original.

Keep 
It 
Sausagey 
Silly.

One of the drawbacks for a Pie Shop in a Village as small and remote as Bang Niang is lack of traditional pie eaters.  As it's an English and Australian thing, we often get blank looks as people look at the shop, wondering (as I have done myself this past year) what on earth we are doing.  No two, three or four day old stock on the shelves or in the display freezer leaves us looking low of produce, especially at breakfast time.

So... we started rolling out the dough a bit earlier and getting sausage rolls ready by 7 or 8 in the morning.  Went down well, but still we don't have the volume of tourists seeking out food at this hour.  Most people who saw them had them, came back again for them and also came back to try other products, enjoying them all the more for their freshness.  The upshot of this was we were now spending less time cooking up bacon, sausage and eggs.... but alas, the call of the baht came from Bangkok and I had to heed it.

We will be back to full strength next week as Um has left Khon Kaen and is expected to get on the Khao Lak bus anyday soon.  We will try for the early start pie to go and the Sausage roll will the in the vanguard.  Report back next month.

I always hated re-heated pies and am lucky I have never had to eat them.  I will often knock up a few fresh ones when I am travelling and staying with mates and it is really the way to go.  Sausage rolls are easy to prep, easy to turn out, bit tricky to cook right, but so so easy to sell.  Often I hear "I'll have one of them... what is it?" from the shop as the aroma and sight of oven fresh pastry hooks another fan.  We sell as many in this area to Europeans and Scandinavians as we to do English these days and with perhaps a bit of a seasoning twist, will get them on Thai plates..... or maybe not.

For this shop, we have pushed fresh pies and make the shop work as a pie shop and but for other comittments and staff having accidents we would have some serious fresh meals out every day.  That said, we have at least honed our skills and are in a position to fly pretty much anywhere we set up shop.

I really must get a camera!!