Low Fat Chicken & Apricot Sausage Rolls

As much as I love having friends over for dinner parties and making slightly odd and crazy concoctions I also love making regular sorts of treats. For friends I decided to bake these chicken and apricot sausage rolls. Our visitor is also a lover of pies and sausage rolls and I thought that I'd make them some lunch which was a little healthier than a takeaway shop offering. These were so delicious even though they're packed with a low fat mince and vegetables and I'd definitely recommend making these.

I used chicken breast mince in these sausage rolls which is lower in fat than sausage mince filling. Instead of adding fillers and to lower the amount of meat in them, I also added broccoli as well as apricots as I was discussing the merits of classic winter dishes from our childhood and apricot chicken was one of them. I fed them to the slightly vegetable phobic guest and they got his thumbs up. As for Mr NQN his approval was in the wolfing down of six of these babies. And yet he still remains infuriatingly skinny!

When Mr NQN and I were getting married, I decided to join some wedding forums as I thought I might get some great recommendations from them and truthfully, there's nobody quite as enthusiastic about weddings as brides. Some of the members were lovely and I got lots of great advice not to mention an unexpected source of sympathy whenever an law would throw us a curve ball (and there were a lot of these curve balls mainly from Mr NQN's mum Tuulikki! ;) ).

Some forum member were more welcoming than others. I remember writing that I really enjoyed having friends over for dinner parties. That prompted one member to go on a diatribe about how she hated the term dinner party and that it was just for pretentious snobs. I couldn't even defend my use of what I consider to be a fairly normal term and explain that my dinner parties aren't stuffy affairs and instead often start with costumes and end with playing games. My friends are way too down to earth to put up with any sort of stuffy nonsense. I decided that the forum wasn't for me and I backed out of there as quickly as I could.

I've told Mr NQN that if I start spinning toffee just before guests arrive, settle me down with a tranquiliser gun and tuck me into bed with a cup of tea and a few episodes of True Blood.

So tell me Dear Reader, do you have dinner parties? And do you think that it's a pretentious term?

Healthy Chicken & Apricot Sausage Rolls

An Original Recipe by Not Quite Nigella

• 500g/1 pound chicken breast mince

• 1 onion, chopped finely

• 1 carrot, chopped finely

• 1/2 head of broccoli, chopped finely

• 2/3 cup of dried apricots, chopped finely

• 1 egg

• 2 teaspoons salt

• 1 teaspoon black pepper

• 4 sheets of reduced fat puff pastry

• 1 egg, whisked for egg wash

• Sesame seeds to sprinkle

Variation: try this with turkey mince and dried cranberries or use golden sultanas

Step 1 - Preheat oven to 200C/400F. Line two large trays with baking parchment. Take out the sheets of puff pastry to defrost.

Step 2 - In a bowl mix the mince, onion, carrot, broccoli, apricots, egg, salt and pepper. I put them all in a food processor and whizzed it together. Divide each square of pastry in half and with a teaspoon, place the filling to one side of the pastry. Roll up and seal the pastry edges gently with a little of the eggwash.

Step 3 - Place on the baking tray and cut clashes in them. Brush with egg wash (I do this twice to get a nice golden shade) and then sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake for 25 minutes. Serve with tomato sauce or a chilli tomato sauce.