Pigs in a Blanket with Homemade Dough

February. Black History Month and the kitchen is in its most intentional mode — the community meals, the demonstrations, the conversations about food and history that New Hope AME takes seriously and that I have been part of for enough years now to consider my primary form of civic participation. Not voting, not marching, though I have done both — cooking. The most continuous, most repeated, most material form of saying: we are here, we have been here, we are not going anywhere, and the food we make carries proof of that.

I had a conversation this week with the young woman Rosa — the one from the Saturday class who has been at Tuesdays since fall — about why she started coming. She said she came for the food and stayed because of what was underneath it. I asked her what was underneath it. She said: the feeling that what you're doing matters all the way down, not just at the surface. She said she had worked in restaurants before, good ones, and the cooking was excellent but it never felt like this. I said: what feels different? She said: here, the food is an argument. For something. And I said, yes. That's what it is. The food is an argument that people should eat well and be seen and belong to something. Every plate is that argument, made with food instead of words. She nodded and wrote it down. Another notebook. Another notebook, and I am still here, and the argument continues.

After the conversation with Rosa — after she wrote down “the food is an argument” in her notebook — I went home and made this. Not because it is a complicated dish, but because it is exactly the kind of food we bring to the Tuesday table: something made fully by hand, something that takes a little more effort than it had to, something that says without saying it that the people eating deserve the real thing. Pigs in a blanket from homemade dough is that argument in miniature — every one rolled by hand, every one a small insistence that this meal, and the people at it, are worth the time.

Prep Time: 30 min | Cook Time: 20 min | Total Time: 50 min | Servings: 24 pieces

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/3 cup cold unsalted butter, cubed
3/4 cup whole milk
1 egg, beaten (for egg wash)
24 cocktail sausages or mini smoked sausages
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard (optional, for brushing)
Sesame seeds or poppy seeds for topping (optional)

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat your oven to 400°F (200°C). Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
Make the dough. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, and garlic powder. Add the cold butter cubes and work them into the flour with your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs with pea-sized pieces of butter remaining.
Add milk. Pour in the milk and stir just until the dough comes together — do not overmix. The dough should be soft and slightly tacky. Turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and gently pat it into a smooth rectangle about 1/4 inch thick.
Cut the dough. Using a sharp knife or pizza cutter, cut the dough into strips roughly 1 inch wide and 3 inches long — one strip per sausage. You should get approximately 24 strips.
Wrap the sausages. If using, brush each strip lightly with Dijon mustard. Place a cocktail sausage at one end of each strip and roll the dough snugly around it, overlapping slightly. Place seam-side down on the prepared baking sheet, spacing about 1 inch apart.
Apply egg wash. Brush the tops of each wrapped sausage with the beaten egg. Sprinkle with sesame or poppy seeds if desired.
Bake. Bake for 18–20 minutes, until the dough is puffed and golden brown on top and the bottoms are set. Rotate the pan halfway through for even color.
Serve. Let cool for 5 minutes on the pan before transferring to a platter. Serve warm with mustard, hot sauce, or your preferred dipping sauce alongside.

Nutrition (per serving)

Pigs in a Blanket with Homemade Dough — Food as Argument, Made for the Table