Chicken roulade with smoked salmon, spinach and a timbale of asparagus and arborio rice, with a velouté and Champagne – by Mike Allison

INGREDIENTS

(serves four)

4 x 225g chicken supremes
225g smoked salmon
110g fresh leaf spinach
300ml chicken stock
50ml cream
Salt and pepper
110g arborio rice
12 fingers of fine asparagus, cooked and finely chopped
50ml butter
50ml Champagne

METHOD

Skin and trim the supremes and remove the knuckle bones. Then bat out, between pieces of clingfilm, until they are wafer thin . Cover the individual pieces of chicken first with a layer of smoked salmon and then with the uncooked baby leaves of spinach. Roll them up like a cigar and wrap tightly in clingfilm.

To make the velouté sauce, reduce 110ml of the chicken stock by half and then add the cream. Reduce again, this time to a coating consistency. Check the seasoning.

Cook the rice in the remaining stock and then add the asparagus stalks, leaving the heads for garnish. Put the rice into four lightly buttered timbales.

Either steam or poach the chicken for 10 minutes and return the stock to simmer. Slice the chicken very thinly in a diagonal fashion and arrange in a fan on a plate. Add the Champagne to the sauce and pour around the chicken.

Garnish with the reheated timbale of rice and asparagus spears.

Mike Allison