A sophisticated roll

Australian staple gets tweaked with complex flavor combinations

Warm and flaky sausage rolls, stuffed with savory meat and striped with ketchup, may not have been school cafeteria fare in Brooklyn while I was growing up. But they were in Australia for Paul Allam, where, as a kid, he used to long for one to appear at his primary school lunch table, tucked into a crumpled brown paper bag, steaming and a little soggy in the best possible way.

Now, as a professional baker and an owner of Bourke Street Bakery, Allam’s goal has been to tweak the humble sausage roll into something reflecting his adult sensibilities, using better ingredients and more sophisticated flavor combinations. At the Manhattan outpost of his Sydneybased bakery group, he offers a heady fennel-scented pork roll, a mellow turkey-cranberry roll and a rotating selection of vegetable rolls, filled with the likes of eggplant with chiles or spinach with feta.

But it was the harissa-tinged lamb version, laced with a smattering of currants and almonds, that I fell head over heels for. So much so that when I put subway rides on a pandemic-temporary hold, I called Allam for the recipe.

He was happy to oblige — with the caveat that his sausage rolls were a bit of a departure from the ones found in school cafeterias, not to mention in petrol stations throughout Australia.

“The traditional sausage rolls you got at school were made from cartilage and the stuff they swept up from the floor,” he told me, possibly joking. “If you went to a bourgeois school, maybe you got celery. It didn’t matter. It still tasted great.

“Food memories from childhood are very strong. They stay with you,” he added.

Before we even hung up the phone, my inbox pinged. Allam had sent the lamb roll recipe, along with another for the pork fennel rolls, which, he noted, ran neck and neck in popularity with the lamb version. Maybe I’d want to try them both?

Being fairly new to the world of sausage rolls, I was happy to explore. In the end I still like the lamb, with its mix of heat and sweetness, best. But the brawny pork rolls were also delicious, infused with anise-flavored fennel, garlic and thyme.

Although Allam swears that ketchup (called tomato sauce in Australia) is the ideal accompaniment for sausage rolls, I didn’t use it on any of them.

Childhood food memories can only get you so far.

With their mix of heat and sweetness, lamb, harissa and almond sausage rolls are a long way from the school cafeteria staple.

RYAN LIEBE/THE NEW YORK TIMES PHOTOS Pork and fennel combine to make a delicious filling for an update of the humble Australian sausage roll.