Chicken Roulade with Maple, Brown Butter and Apple Sauce

Just in case you pick up on the different writing style I will just be up front…this is Laura’s husband, Dan.  I thought about trying to trick you all and write this as if I’m Laura but I’m not good at being that cute and bubbly.  Love you Laura!

Last night we tried making a Roulade, which is just a piece of meat flattened out, stuffed with something and then rolled up.  Pretty simple, right?  So often people call us out for eating fancy food.  I appreciate the compliments that come along with making "fancy" food but let me tell you now, I don’t have any formal training, I just like to experiment and have a general knowledge of what flavors tend to go together.  A book that I refer to quite often is "The Flavor Bible", it has great info on how certain ingredients go together. 
                  

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ingredients

Chicken Roulade
Two Chicken Breasts – bigger the better
Two strips of bacon
Two big handfuls of spinach
1/3 – 1/2 cup parmesan cheese or pick your favorite (I wanted to use blue cheese but my brother was coming over and he is a picky eater)
Salt and Pepper

Sauce
3 Tbsp of Kerrygold butter or regular butter
1 apple diced
2 Tbsp Maple Syrup – could use more if you like it sweeter
2 tsp Worcestershire
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/3 cup water

directions

1) Pound out the chicken breast as thing as you can without tearing it.  I was able to get mine about 1/2″ thick with my rolling pin.  I usually cover the breast with a piece of plastic wrap before pounding.  Keeps it a little less messy.
2) Dice bacon and cook over medium heat until cooked through.  Remove from pan along with a majority of the grease.
3) Using the same pan I add tiny bit of olive oil to the bacon grease then sautee the spinach in the same pan.  Season with a little salt.  Stir quickly as this will cook fast.  Remove and set aside.
4) Assembling the Roulade, lay out the chicken breast skin side down.  Spread out half of the spinach, bacon, and parmesan cheese on each of the chicken breasts.  Starting from the smaller side of the breast, begin to roll the chicken up trying to keep it as tight as possible and trying the keep as much of the good stuff inside. 
5) Using cooking string, wrap the hunk of chicken securing it so that it won’t come undone as it cooks.  No easy way to do this and you will get messy but just make sure you wrap it up tight.  Looks don’t matter as you can see by my picture.
 6) Bake in a 400 degree oven for 30-40 minutes, I checked once at 30 minutes using a meat thermometer and it needed a little more time.
7) While the chicken is baking, begin to make the sauce.  To start add the butter to a small saucepan and let it simmer over medium heat for roughly 10 minutes until the butter turns brown and give off a nutty aroma.
8) Add the remaining ingredients, apples, Worcestershire sauce, water and cinnamon.  Simmer over medium low heat until sauce is reduced by half.
9) Once chicken is cooked through remove from the oven and let sit for 5 minutes before cutting.  I usually remove the chicken when it is between 165-170 degrees as it will continue to cook after you remove it from the oven.
10) After letting it sit for 5 minutes slice the chicken into ¼” pieces and cover with the sauce.
11) Our side dish with this meal was roasted brussel sprouts, we just trim off the bottom of the brussel sprout then cut in half, toss with olive oil and salt and bake for 25-30 minutes to get a nice carmelization.