Chicken and sage sausage rolls

By the end of this week, you'll be full to the brim of recipes for your football shenanigans. You'll also have more than one use for pork fat pastry, because today, you get a second run at it with these tasty little treats.

Chicken and sage are a pretty brilliant combination. Even better when you add a little something-something with... pork fat! Yep, more animal fats. More clogged arteries. More deliciousness. Can't say I don't push the fatty boundaries.

But seriously, just mincing up chicken will surely lead to Dry-Town Chicken Mince, population: You. It needs more moisture than chicken fat alone can deliver, so the pork fat is just providing a little bit of a helping hand. A nudge in a tasty direction. Nothing bad can come of this.

Pork, fennel and chilli sausage rolls with pork fat pastry

Yep, your eyes are not deceiving you. I said pork fat pastry. This stuff is the bee's knees, the cat's pyjamas. It's sweet, salty, flakey, moreish - everything a good pastry should be. Once you wrap your head around the fact you're making pastry with the most direct route to heart disease (pure animal fats), it's a cinch.

The fat I've used in the pastry is called leaf fat. It's the cleanest, whitest fat on the pig from near the kidneys. My butcher at Skinner and Hackett (you're right if you think I live there. I've made a few visits there of late in preparation for football fever), tells me a lady he knows makes a dreamy puff pastry with the stuff and fashions little plum tarts. My gluttonous brain just about went into meltdown at the thought of that. Must. Eat. Pig. Fat. Pastry. It's also the best stuff to use in salami - I think I've found the common denominator in my favourite foods.

Football figs with pancetta

So this is our last weekend for a long time without football. The season starts on Friday and I'm thanking my lucky stars our television is still on the fritz. I'm not the biggest football fan and the thought of Sandie Roberts dulcet tones ringing out in the loungeroom for eighteen Saturdays in a row makes me shudder. I'm not exactly a great ambassador for the AFL, but really, I don't discriminate between codes. None of it is that appealing to me.

The real reason I dislike football may be that my team of choice has not had a great season since the year I was born. I like to think of myself as the ultimate bad luck charm: just being alive has ruined their chances of success. It's a crazy kind of power I wield. The Richmond Tigers tend to be the punchline of any lame football joke. It's hard to get excited about the game when you know your team will be relegated to last place from about four games into the season. No matter, they have the best theme song going 'round. That's all that counts, right?