Chicken and Spinach Roulade
Chicken and Spinach Roulade from France Today Magazine

Serves 2


Ingredients

1/2 onion diced
2 garlic cloves, crushed
50 g butter
2 large chicken breasts
400g of spinach – dry with thick stalks
removed 
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
50ml double cream

1In a large frying pan gently soften the onion and garlic in half the butter. When cooked add in the nutmeg and the seasoning. Add the spinach and allow it to gently wilt then put into the food processor and blitz it – check the seasoning.

2Trim the sinew end of your breasts and butterfly them. That sounds difficult but it’s not. Just lay the breast flat on your board pointy bit towards you and with the thickest side pointing to your knife hand. With a sharp knife cut the breast horizontally through the middle of the thickest part. Only cut just over half way through so you don’t ever see the knife blade through the flesh.

If you peel back the part you have sliced you can see why it’s called butterflying: the two sides are identical like a butterfly. Place the cut sides down on a large piece of cling film and place another bit on top. Gently tap with a rolling pin to flatten. You’ll be surprised how big you can make it. Thin is good but not too thin, it needs some integrity.

3Peel off the top layer of cling film. Spread the spinach mix on the breast but make sure it’s not too wet: I put a small sieve over the mix and spoon into the sieve then take from the sieve to spread on the breast. Reserve the liquid

4You now have a large flat chicken breast with a layer of spinach mix on top and it’s time to make the roulade (you will likely have a couple of tablespoons of spinach mixture leftover – add this to the reserved juices).

5To make the roulade, place the chicken fillet down onto a large piece of cling film making sure both the longest side of the meat and cling film are towards you. This will give you plenty of room on each end of the chicken to roll it up and secure it. Use your fingers to start rolling along the long side. Once you have made the first part of a roll, if you lift up the cling film the chicken should roll onto itself. If you keep lifting the cling film, eventually you will have a ‘swiss roll’ – a chicken roulade!

6Tie off the ends of your cling film and your roulade is ready for cooking. Pop the roll into simmering salted water for 15 minutes and it will be cooked through.

7Add the double cream to the reserved spinach and bring to a simmer, then remove from the heat and press through a sieve into a clean pan. Keep warm.

8Carefully cut open your wrapping, adding any juices to the spinach sauce. Slice the chicken into pieces and nap the spinach cream over the sliced roll.

4 COMMENTS

    • Hi Patricia, thank you for the feedback! We will look into adding conversions for American measures. As for double cream, I believe in America, it is called heavy/whipping cream. Hope this helps!

      – Love, from England.

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