Eating Leeds: Turkey Roll

HOTEL CHOCOLAT COMPETITION - ENDS MIDNIGHT 10 DEC

Sun 9 Dec 2007

It's been our first proper sit down dinner at home for quite a while, and to mark the occasion I graciously let Andy choose the dish. The source was the Observer Food Monthly from November and he picked a sort of turkey roll. The recipe is, apparently, from The Silver Spoon and, while I haven't double checked this, it's very resonant of the involtini agli spinaci we made a while back.

It also turns out that it's better and will make an excellent alternative for those of you not feeding the five thousand on Christmas Day, but still wanting to eat turkey. There is a bit of faff, but the recipe does lend itself to preparation in advance, and I already have it ear marked as a good dish to feed guests.

As usual, my version is not the published version, but in this instance, it's not far off.

We bought a couple of turkey 'steaks' from the supermarket - I assume this means some portion of the breast. The packet contained one larger piece and one smaller, so we froze the smaller and I took to the larger with cling film and the rolling pin and flattened it out into a good size, and eminently rollable, rectangle.

I soaked one and a half slices of white bread (crusts removed and torn up) in about 150mL of dry white wine (2005 Palliser Estate sauvignon blanc - a really lovely, mouth wateringly dry, high acid sav blanc from NZ with pronounced gooseberries on the nose and palate). While that was sitting, I washed and wilted a bag (250g) of baby spinach. When the spinach was done, I left it to drain, while frying up a chopped onion and a clove of garlic. As the onion softened, I squeezed the wine from the bread, and added that to the frying pan, before squeezing and chopping the spinach. That went in too ... and finally, a sprinkling of dried majoram and some salt and pepper.

Once that was all cooked, it was put into a bowl to cool a little, before being mixed with a beaten egg. The oven was pre-heated to 180C. The spinach mixture was spread over the turkey 'steak' which was duly rolled up and tied with string. A roasting dish had been prepared with some butter and oil and the package was baked for around 30 minutes - by which time it was looking satisfactorily golden.

We served it with the remainder of the spinach filling fried up, some left over mashed potato mixed with egg, fried up, and some steamed carrots. And the remainder of the sauvignon blanc.