Arriving, Adjusting, Remembering - A Photograph, a Sausage Roll and the Slow Work of Belonging.
Some places stay with you long after you have left, and some recipes carry more than flavours. They carry place, memory, and the long journey of becoming.
Our first home in Australia was shared with mamma's sister and her family, all under one roof. She had migrated in the late fifties, married and started a family in this home. It was a modest weatherboard house, close to the school, full of voices, routines, and the quiet negotiations of a newly arrived family finding their footing. As a child, it felt busy and comforting all at once.
That house is still there. Every time I pass it, I slow down and picture us playing in the front yard. And just behind it, further down the same street, sits papa`s current home of care. There’s something quietly moving about that - the place where his life in Australia began, with another chapter unfolding just behind it. With migration, the past has a way of staying close, but what is sad is that papa` doesn't remember.
We arrived in Australia in 1970. I was five and still accustomed to Italian home cooking and leftovers for lunch. It was some time later that I tasted my first sausage roll. It was during school holidays when mamma would come home for lunch during her work break, that she would often bring us something simple from the cafeteria — a sausage roll each. At the time, it felt like a small rite of passage. Something warm, familiar to everyone else, and reassuring to me. At school however, my lunches were unmistakably Italian, wrapped and scented with home. But this sausage roll felt like belonging.
I was a shy child, often lost in my own thoughts. In the school photo taken the year we arrived, I’m not looking at the camera. I didn’t understand the instruction to look forward and smile. Instead, I remember the heat of the sun on my head, and the pattern of the dress worn by the girl beside me that I much admired. I was absorbing everything — language, sounds, textures - quietly, carefully.
My aunt and uncle had sponsored our first months in Australia, and we lived with them while my parents found work. Every morning my uncle walked us all to school. To coax me out the door, he would sometimes promise an ice cream on the way home — a Peters Neapolitan in a wafer cone. Strawberry, vanilla and chocolate. It was the closest thing to gelato I knew at the time, and chocolate was always my favourite.
Food marked so many of those early moments. My first Australian breakfast was Cornflakes, served on the plane just before landing in Melbourne. Then came Vegemite — offered by my cousins when my longing for Nutella (Italian chocolate spread) couldn’t be met. I still remember the shock of it. Thankfully, that experience was softened with a few squares of Cadbury chocolate filled with caramel. These are small memories, but they are the ones that linger. They surface unexpectedly — through taste, through place, through recipes passed and adapted.
The sausage roll is one of those foods that slowly found its way into my life. When I started making my own version, I chose a familiar herb - rosemary, rooted in memory. It carried me back to my aunt and uncle’s backyard, growing quietly beneath the shade of a huge lemon tree. That small corner of the garden felt timeless, steady, and grounding during those early years of settling into a new country. A rosemary bush has always stood in my parents garden and now in mine.
From there, lamb felt like the natural choice. A familiar pairing that has shaped so many meals over time. This sausage roll is less about following a recipe, so much as paying attention to what lingers, to flavours that quietly stay with you.
It's a dish that adapts easily. You might replace the lamb with mushrooms and lentils, keeping rosemary as the thread, or choose a different herb altogether. You can shape it to suit your own tastes, just as we learned to shape our own lives.
Ingredients: (makes 24 pieces)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 small brown onion, finely chopped
1 small carrot, finely diced
1 celery stick, finely diced
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 slice white bread, roughly chopped
1/4 cup milk
500 g lamb mince
1 cup flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
4 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
Salt & pepper, to taste
Finely grated rind of 1 lemon
2 sheets frozen puff pastry
1 egg, lightly beaten (for egg wash)
4 tbsp sesame seeds (for sprinkling over finished rolls)
Method:
Preheat oven to 200°C. Line two trays with baking paper.
Heat oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add onion, carrot, celery, garlic, parsley, lemon rind, chilli, cumin and coriander. Cook, stirring occasionally, until very soft. Set aside to cool.
Place bread in a bowl, pour over milk and allow to stand for 5 minutes. Squeeze out excess milk.
Combine the vegetable mixture with the lamb mince and bread. Mix well and season to taste.
Cut each pastry sheet in half. Spoon a quarter of the mixture along one long edge. Brush the opposite edge with water and roll to enclose the filling. Repeat with remaining pastry and filling.
Brush rolls with egg wash, sprinkle with sesame seeds and chopped rosemary. Cut into four pieces and place on lined trays.
Bake for 25–30 minutes, until golden brown. Serve warm with your favourite condiment — a relish, or simple tomato sauce.
