Was a succes again executing it at christmas. Just a short verison of the recipe in case anyone ever cares to try a repeat or wants to use it as a starting point for inspiration:
Proportion per roulade; I doubled on roulades for our 7 person meal, same with the sauce. They're surprisingly light. Also, I'm not sure there's an easy way to properly execute this without a sous-vide; would probably come out a lot drier.
For the sauce:
-250 grams of frozen raspberries
-about 1,5-2 tea spoons of ground christmas spice (really just to taste)
-about 1,5-2 tea spoons of brown sugar (again, really just to taste, but you need some to brighten it up)
Throw the fruits in a saucier or saucepan on the lowest heat you have, just let it go for a while until it slowly reduces to a pulp, add the spices and sugar to taste. Then work it through the finest sieve you have. Sieve size matters because otherwise you still get half the pits and it won't be smooth.
You can also do this with other berries / spices / herbs, the process is the same.
I did not find adding stock to be of benefit in earlier attempts; it actually reduces the raspberry flavor too much and gives it a sort of 'identity crisis'.
Don't overdo the amount of sauce since it easily overpowers the roulade.
For the roulade:
-1 whole guineafowl
-about 4 legs of wild duck leg confit; for domesticated duck you'd go for 1 or 2 legs
-50 grams dried apricot
-50 grams dried cranberries
-40 grams pistacchios (this is 40 grams after shelling)
-dry cured ham; you tend to need at least 10 slices, I always make sure I have some extra. I use serrano because I'm a cheapskate but parmaham would work great too
-fresh thyme; for some reason it doesn't come through that much so I had to use like 10-15 sprigs to really notice it.
You want to plan ahead a bit so you're not crosscontaminating your entire kitchen and don't have your meat out of the fridge too long. So I prefer to set up my rolling station first. You want the biggest / widest roll of cling film you can find; I always set it up so I have a big board and I put the clingfilm behind so I can just pull it out and cut it off. Get some bowls ready (one big one to mix the filling)
I also cut all the filling ingredients first. So the fruits I cut into a fine brunoise; I really went with just a few mm squared, though you could probably go larger if you wanted to make your life easier. The pistacchios I roasted, then cut it all up a bit so it's not too chunky.
The confit legs are also easy to pluck ahead of time.
Then for the guineafowl; you don't need the skin with this version, so it doesn't have to remain intact. The breast + as much of the first wing limb you take off the carcass, take the wingbone out, and you slam it flat in some cling film. It's not a problem if you have a few different parts.
Season on both sides.
The legs / thighs you take off the carcass and bone them out. Try to take the worst of the sinews out, but don't sacrifice too much meat to do it. The resulting fillets you slice as finely as you can (a bit like a tartar). This is easier if you throw them in the freezer for a bit so they're really cold.
Weigh your bowl empty so you can start from 0, add the sliced legs, do the math on the extra fruits & nuts and add about 1,5% salt (for me that was usually around 6-8 gram). Don't include the confit legs because they're already seasoned. Add black pepper to taste and the thyme, add the shredded confit legs, then knead it through a bit (almost like kneading bread though). It will get a bit sticky after a while and this is what binds it together later on. Then add the rest of the filling and mix it up.
Then it's just a matter of assembling and rolling it up. You roll out a big layer of cling film, then you add a layer of overlapping serranoham, you layer the pieces of breast fillet on top of that (make sure it's a nice even layer), and you then create a 'sausage' of filling on top of that. Then you just roll it up using the cling film, it's a lot like rolling a wellington. Try to get all the air out, then roll it up real tight (there's plenty of good YT videos on this) and tie up the ends. I always make sure I have enough overlap on all the ends and to at least do a double or triple layer to make sure it doesn't leak. Throw it in the fridge over night (yes you do all this the day before).
On the day itself, throw it in a 65 degrees celcius sous-vide for 2 hours. To finish, unwrap, dry it off, and fry in a frying pan real quick in generous amount of butter just to get a bit of browning on the outside - takes just a couple of minutes, the serrano goes really fast. For me it had always set well enough that I didn't have to tie it up.
Caveats:
-Because I add the confit legs the filling is actually slightly too big, so you don't get full coverage with the fillet. Personally I think it's worth it because the filling is more interesting, but if you want a 'perfect fit', you either put less filling, or don't add the confit legs.
-You can do this of course with normal chicken or any other bird and a million other flavorings / aromatics / additions. But if you can get it guineafowl has better flavor than almost any chicken you'll be able to find, while still being really accessible in flavor.
-I found rolling in serrano easier than trying to keep the skin intact, and flavor wise I acutally prefer it. It's also much easier to get a nice texture on the outside; after SV the skin gets wet anyway so it's way more work to dry it out and get it crispy.
-These are surprisingly light to eat. So in a 5 course meal I made 2 of these for 7 people, and it basically vaporized on people's plates. Even with just 2 people you can finish 1 roulade surprisingly easily.
-There's no binder or anything. Totally not needed if you knead the leg meat a bit with the salt; it firms up well enough.
My accompanying salad - that worked well enough I figured I'd add it, but just about any 'fresh' and somewhat fruity salad would work:
-dressing of fresh lemon (juice + zest) + mango syrup (I use the stuff from Monin). If you can't get the mango syrup then lemon + honey would work too. Just mix it to taste until it feels balanced enough.
-spinach
-conference pears - though other pears would work too
-fennel
-mango
I always take out the biggest stems from the spinach and cut it through a bit because it's better for mouthfeel. Pears are peeled quartered and cut to pieces. The fennel I always cut really finely otherwise it gets too chewy. For mango you can actually use frozen, you just have to defrost it in time and cut it up a bit, but at least over here quality is good enough to use in salad.
Quantities is really to taste but you want to keep it a bit balanced so it's not a complete fruit salad.
