Pigs in a blanket (British)

Funny name, huh? I find foods with funny names soooo cute. More are soon to follow, like "Little lies" (Romanian "Minciunele") or some cookies called "Boy-bait" (ha-ha!) and lots of other funny-named surprises. 

Pigs in a blanket are a traditional British starter, especially for fall and winter holidays (at Christmas for instance their presence on the table is a must). A meal wouldn't be complete without pigs in blankets (little sausage bites wrapped in puff pastry) or, even funnier, pigs in pigs (using bacon slices for wrapping rather than pastry). Our other favorite, which we've talked about before, dates wrapped in bacon and oven-baked, are apparently called "devils on horseback" in the English tradition. The world is full of savory anthropo-linguistics :)

Variations exist, of course. Here, we made these simple two-bite hors d'oeuvre yummier by adding a touch of creamy mustard. The ingredient list thus counts three. Couldn't be simpler ;)

Ingredients (makes about 16 pigs and some salty crackers from the pastry remains; serves 2-4):

• 150 g thin, crispy sausages (we used a smoked Tirolese specialty)
•  1 package of puff pastry (ours was 275 g)
• 2-3 tablespoons of mustard sauce (from the jar/tube)

Note: you can use a cookie cutter for all the pastry-cutting (like we did here) or a plain knife. Nothing wrong with either :)

Aaaaand, peel your eyes well and remember the crakers tip. It's a good way to use up extra puff pastry from all kinds of recipes (for instance Pissaladieres - French caramelized onion tarts).

Now let's get to the pigs in blankets. :)

First, preheat oven to 180 degrees. Cut the sausages into 3-4 cm pieces (like this):

Roll out the puff pastry onto a baking tray lined with baking paper. Put sausage pieces on it with a little space between them, to measure how much pastry you need to cut:

Roll one of the sausages in the pastry and cut accordingly:

Usually the pastry required for the sausages is square-shaped. After cutting all the pastry for the total number of sausage pieces you have, rub them with a little mustard before wrapping the "pigs":

If you have remaining puff pastry that doesn't fit the sausage shape (and all the sausages have been wrapped anyway) cut it in strips:

Then you can rub them too with a little mustard, or do what we did and sprinkle grated Emmentaler cheese over them:

Put both the pigs in a blanket and the cheesy (or mustard-y) crackers in the tray:

Put in the preheated oven and bake for 20-25 minutes. Take'em out:

Put the pigs on a plate:

Serve warm. :)

P.S: The crackers look pretty good too so don't forget about them: