Tag Archives: sausage roll

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Sausage Roll Review: Live N Let Pie

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Sitting outside this small bakery in the brisk and dazzling afternoon, I take in the view across to the Goolwa Shopping Centre. A key tenant is an especially attractive Foodland. Over-sized and ridiculous vehicles — ‘trucks’ in the US of A — crawl in and out of the car park.

I study my sausage roll. Mum used to make sausage rolls — with help from my sister, Jill and me — and the best job was to make indentations on the pastry with a fork. I was always amazed how these little rows of bumps were still there when they’d come out of the oven. It’s virtuous to preserve a sense of wonder, even when beholding freshly baked, meat-encased foodstuffs.

Glancing at the commercial real estate to the south, I note it boasts a Smoke Mart. I consider swinging by but then decide against buying Dad a novelty glass bong for Father’s Day (this Sunday).

My roll is enormous and I’m immediately suspicious. Munch. Look up again at the Smoke Mart. Munch again. Tasty and surprising. Look at sausage roll gizzards.

Capsicum. Oregano. Pepper. The new holy trinity of additives.

The bakery’s name is a pun on the theme song of Live and Let Die, the 1973 film and eighth in the Bond franchise, starring Roger Moore. Written and performed by Paul McCartney and Wings, there’s been five decades of controversy around this grammatical howler-

But in this ever-changing world in which we live in
Makes you give in and cry

Yes, (at least) one too many inclusions of in. Redundancy city. Maddening. Did this bloke write ‘Hey Jude?’ Covering the song, other artists have repaired the lyric. Macca himself is unsure. This, during an interview-

He starts to sing to himself: “In this ever changing world. . . . ‘ It’s funny. There’s too many ‘ins.’ I’m not sure. I’d have to have actually look. I don’t think about the lyric when I sing it. I think it’s ‘in which we’re living.’ Or it could be ‘in which we live in.’ And that’s kind of, sort of, wronger but cuter. That’s kind of interesting. ‘In which we live in.’ I think it’s ‘In which we’re living.’

As I continued my lunch, I thought about this a bit more. The shopping centre was still there. I wondered how many glass bongs had been sold in Smoke Mart since I sat down with my engorged sausage roll.

There’s a dog bowl out the front of the bakery. I like this. Should you feed a sausage roll to a sausage dog?

Mancunian types, Oasis, have reformed and are touring. I think the Gallaghers are funny in a scowling way. Clearly influenced by the Beatles, one finally met Paul McCartney and asked what he thought of this, he replied, ‘It were fookin’ great. How amazing to meet your idol! I mean, Wings are my favourite fookin’ band.’

My sausage roll was highly satisfactory, and I considered if the Gallaghers eat them. Macca’s a vegetarian so probably not. Did Bond ever throw one at a villain and fell him? Unsure, I drove off past the shopping centre thinking of grammar, dogs, and post-Beatles careers.

I needed to clear my head. Father’s Day would be here soon.

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Sausage Roll Review: Ocean Street Bakehouse, Victor Harbor

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Of course, I’m here for a sausage roll but my problems are immediate for the menu board has two categories: plain or cheese and bacon.

This strikes me as a curious and oddly compelling way of organising us sausage roll-eaters. Those who know me well won’t be surprised to read that I’m in the plain camp (now, don’t say anything nasty).

Further menu scanning reveals differentiation between pies and steak pies. Does this infer that steak pies are somehow inferior? I’ve no appetite for apartheid.

And quiche. Let’s not start on quiche for quiche, dear reader, has its own category. It was always an attention-seeking food.

Purchase in hand, I claim a footpath (not pavement or sidewalk) table. There are signs taped everywhere begging me to not feed the birds. Baked goods, I learn from these instructive texts, are not naturally in the diet of birds.

So, if a magpie eats a pie, does it make him (or her) a cannibal?

Next door to the OSB (as I’m hereafter calling the Ocean Street Bakehouse) is a Subway. Suddenly, I feel as though I’m surrounded by conflict and longitudinal tension. I’m in a lunchtime warzone and can imagine an 80’s music video featuring a (soft-focus) dance off between the bakers and the sandwich artists.

With a seagull now menacing, I open the bag and there’s my sausage roll. It’s big and hot. Easing it out, I take a bite.

I’m disappointed to note that the record store across the road has newspaper all over its windows. Victor Beats had vast stocks of vinyl and a good array of guitars too. But it appears done. My bleak ponderings continue. Will physical shops even exist in a decade?

I look up and see the Thirsty Camel has a series of advertisements draped on the pub façade. These uniformly claim various, ‘Unseriously good deals’ for assorted drinks. Between sausage roll bites I try to fathom how ‘unseriously’ works in this slogan. I can’t grasp it and doubt that anyone on Gruen or within the grog or marketing industries could either. What does it mean?

My sausage roll is satisfactory but little beyond this. The pasty’s too flaky and I wear much of it on my freshly laundered shorts. The roll’s innards need some zing courtesy of a spicy additive like a waft or two of pepper. No, it shouldn’t hide (shamefully) behind some bacon and cheese.

Near my table stands a bicycle which could belong to one of the Famous Five. You know, the Enid Blyton books. Probably, only George, Julian, Dick, or Anne might own the bicycle, and not Timmy, for as clever as he is, he’s a dog. In self-pleased and conspiratorial tones, I think Julian would’ve said this about my sausage roll:

‘I won’t say it’s beastly, but Aunt Fanny makes sausage rolls that are far more splendid. Hers are tasty and it’s no wonder Uncle Quentin can’t keep his professorial hands off them. Don’t you think, Dick?’

And then they’d all row over to Kirrin Island and apprehend some rough-voiced smugglers.

The noon breeze urges the Norfolk Pines into waving about on the esplanade. A Putin lookalike exits the bakery.

Nanna and poppa are on a bench with a grand kiddy.

Ocean Street is a one-way street and despite their problematic nature, I quite like the unique charms of a uni-directional thoroughfare. This is good because we live on such a street.

I drive off to Port Elliot with crumbs of contemplation clinging to my shorts. I’ve stuff to write.

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Sausage Roll Review: (not quite) Hurling on Hurtle Square

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Colonel William Light’s vision for Adelaide included five public squares: Hindmarsh, Light, Victoria, Whitmore and Hurtle. Each has a distinct appearance and mise en scène and despite driving through it for decades I’d not enjoyed the latter’s leafy space.

Claire and I bought a late lunch from this state’s dominant petrol retailer and biggest private company: an On The Run (OTR) service station. Of course, its customers are rarely running anywhere as they’re in vehicles and as such are necessarily sedentary, and most outlets of this type haven’t provided any traditional service for epochs. Simply fill the car and then scoop up hideously overpriced drink and food and go to the cashier. The only service offered is a chirpily redundant, “Would you like your receipt?”

Hurtle Square is in the south-eastern corner of the city and mostly surrounded by low-rise apartments whose balconies look out over the greenery. Arboriculturally, this park is diverse with magnolia and thin pine trees and other trees in seemingly random arrangement. But I remember that like a late-period Steely Dan album, it’s possible to over-engineer.

I’ve a cheese and bacon sausage roll. It makes a positive optical impression with agreeable pastry that’s neither flaky nor oily, but my context is reminiscent of the soon-to-be-regecided King Duncan gazing upon Macbeth’s home when he remarks: this castle hath a pleasant seat.

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Unsurprisingly, this pastry’s sinister mission is to protect an inferior filling, like a heavy-set Secret Service agent from a 1980s film starring Brian Dennehy. While it’s admirable, camouflage and strategic distraction are evident and I note that yet again subterfuge lurks in my simple foodstuff.

Its texture is uncertain and mushy, and I understand that sausage rolls don’t contain real sausages, but if this were encased and sizzling away on my barbeque in front of people both dear or of mere acquaintance, I’d have an acute case of Sausage Shame (SS). Knocking sullenly on the office door of my superior, I’d hand in my tongs and apron and barbequing badge (a scene from a different Brian Dennehy film).

The cheese I was promised is barely present. Instead it’s like the elusive memory of cheese from, say, my middle past, and in the manner of a Wordsworth conceit it’s both troubling but also hopeful in that one day I may again enjoy cheese, possibly in a sausage roll advertising such. In 2020, even cheese is complicated.

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My longing deepens when I gaze over at the Coopers Alehouse. It began as the Earl of Aberdeen before Dame Edna Everage reopened it with a new name in 1987 (wouldn’t Sir Les Paterson been better placed to handle this?). Like many pubs it has a forlorn canvas advertising pick up only meals from 5-8pm.

Still, it’s a breezeless, mild May in our mostly safe and opportunely isolated state. SA’s had no new cases for twelve days and Audrey’s vintage coffee van was doing a lively trade this morning on the Glenelg North esplanade as I ambled through.

While my sausage roll was of motley quality Claire and I now turn to the next course of our alfresco eating: an unapologetically decadent vanilla slice with a calorific count probably beyond a K-Mart abacus.

As the Two Fat Ladies’ Clarissa and Jennifer used to rejoice, “Munch on, munch on, what a lovely luncheon!”

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Sausage Roll Review: Orange Spot Bakery, Glenelg

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Such is my undying dedication to critical thinking with regard to contemporary baked goods that although it was already one hundred degrees (Fahrenheit is decidedly apocalyptic) just prior to midday I gritted my teeth, pushed through the punishing heat, walked in and bought their finest specimen.

Is $5 too much? In 2020 and enjoying life in my seventh different decade, I guess not. Of course, I then heard these sinister words.

“Would you like sauce?”

No, came my overly curt reply. I should’ve worn my patented anti-sauce cap to save her the bother.

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Back outside I found a table and chair on the footpath/sidewalk/pavement (delete as required). I had no competition. It was hot.

My sausage roll and I were ready for each other, like contestants on Perfect Match, except there’d be no lies about loving bushwalking and horse-riding and rock-climbing. And no Dexter to provide a compatibility percentage.

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I looked across the road and saw the Watermark. The extra-large, charisma-free, over-priced, charmless, mid-strength beer-haunted, pokies-riddled pub. I must get in there again soon I thought to myself. Especially around five on a Friday if I feel an odd need to receive a kickin’ from a high vis type who has been in there all day and because his jet-ski is about to be repossessed, is angry with the world, in a generalised, nagging, Cro-Magnon sort of way.

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I took a bite of my sausage roll. It certainly tasted like one. This was a promising start, but then again, if you hear “Hey Jude” on the radio it’s instantly recognisable although it mightn’t be the Beatles but some pale photocopy of a boy band, all clothes and choreography and clueless.

The aroma confirmed this but didn’t engage me. It sat there in my nostrils, but like me at a salsa party, there was no dancing, just a sullen inertia.

I think the pastry fundamental to the sausage roll experience and this was somewhat sweaty and fell just short of that most disagreeable state: oily.

The meat was of an appropriate consistency, but as the aroma suggested, lacked memorable character and arresting spiciness.

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Just over in Colley Reserve I imagined the big hole by the Patawalonga. Recently, the replica of the HMS Buffalo, proudly built in 1980, was finally demolished. In 2030, Mayor Chad Cornes will announce plans to build a replica of the replica of the Buffalo as it will “create exciting tourist opportunities” for Glenelg. Not any humans mind you, but seagulls and pigeons and exiled magpies. There’s nothing more likely.

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I continued with my meal, but like a small child found it no longer had my interest. If I was a toddler it could have been the day’s third apple out of which had been taken a solitary bite.

Safely home, I reflected on my sausage roll with Claire and we decided that I could be seeking higher meaning where none exists. Despite the endless awards – name a country bakery that hasn’t won a prize for its pies – the very best ones are the home-made variety. You know, those with the fork marks sealing shut the pastry, the fork marks that suggest love and family and hope.

Oh, how I love those blessed fork marks!

Yes, that’s what I need to do. Make some home-made sausage rolls. These will solve my existential crisis, and correct my view of the world on this hot, punishing day!

Right, where’s the mince and pastry and my precious fork?

Hang on. Just as soon as I’ve had a restorative nap and watched the cricket.

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