Roulade of Poularde wrapped in Swiss Chard with applewood smoked bacon

Tonight we served a dinner for an important corporate client that needed to be first rate. For the main course we tackled Roulade of Poularde wrapped in Swiss Chard with applewood smoked bacon and Pruneaux D’agen. This is a fairly simple dish comprised of ‘gluing’ two breast of poularde together using Transglutaminase (AKA food glue) and then rolling in cling film to create a roulade. The poularde roulade is left in the fridge for 6 hours to set the ‘glue’, we then wrap the roulade with blanched Swiss Chard and rewrap in plastic.



We then cook the poularde sous vide at 62 C for 1 ½ hours, or so the book states. In reality we cooked ours to 68 C for two hours and they turned out perfect; we all feel that some Under Pressure recipes need a higher cooking temperature to ensure food safety.

We serve this with prunes soaked in a red wine syrup, crisp applewood bacon garnish, blanched spring onions, champ potato with cabbage and brunoise vegetables. We finished with a caramelized shallot veal jus.

The rest of tonight’s meal consisted of two dishes from The French Laundry. The first is the iconic Salmon Tartare with Sweet Red Onion Crème Fraiche, and the second is Dungeness Crab Salad with Cucumber Gelee, Grain Mustard Vinaigrette and Frisee Lettuce. The cornets were a last minute decision as we had time to play and thought it would be a nice surprise for our guests (which it was!). Dan Reed, our Australian Chef and I knocked up the tuile mix and salmon tartare in record time only to find our mix was to short; the pastry broke each time we tried to shape the cornets. Not to be outdone, we remade the mix and plowed on to victory! The crab salad is very beautiful with the cucumber juice jelly lifting the dish incredibly well. A special thanks to Shane Miller the Chef pictured on the left in the photo below; Shane, Dan, and Ioana our Sous Chef produced a great dinner! Also pictured below is Savino our Senior Butler; Savino and the front of house team served a splendid meal and provided first class service!