Recipes

Claire Macdonald’s Cheese roulade with Roasted Red Pepper and crème fraiche filling

Serves 6-8

This makes a good first or a main course, served with a salad and warmed bread. The roulade can be made a day in advance of being filled.

Ingredients

• 1oz/28g butter and 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 onion, skinned, halved and diced finely
• 1 stick of celery, peeled with a potato peeler to remove the stringy bits and then sliced thinly
• 1 rounded tablespoon plain flour
• 1 pint/570ml milk
• 3oz/85g grated cheddar cheese
• A good grating of nutmeg, 1 teaspoon salt, about 20 grinds of black pepper
• 4 large eggs, yolks separated from the whites

• For the filling
• 2 tubs of DipNation’s Roast Red Pepper dip
• 1 tub of crème fraiche
• 2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley – for garnishing

Method

Line a swiss roll or shallow baking tin with baking parchment, sticking it in each corner with a small dab of butter on the tin.

Melt the butter and heat the olive oil together in a saucepan, and fry the diced onion and sliced celery together, for about five minutes, or until both are soft.

Stir in the flour, cook for a minute before gradually stirring in the milk, stirring until the sauce boils. Take the pan off the heat, and stir in the grated cheese, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Cool for five minutes, and then beat in the yolks, one by one. Leave the sauce to cool.

Whisk up the egg whites with a pinch of salt, until they are fairly stiff. With a flat metal whisk fold the whisked whites thoroughly through the cheese sauce, and spread this evenly over the parchment-lined baking tin. Bake in a moderate heat, 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4 for 25-30 minutes – the cooked roulade should be golden in colour and puffed up. As it cools, it will sink down – don’t worry, this is inevitable. When cooled, to turn it out, lay a large sheet of baking parchment on a work surface. Dust liberally with the finely chopped parsley, and take hold of either side of the parchment beneath the cooled roulade. Flip it face down onto the parsley, and carefully peel off the parchment from the back of the roulade, peeling in strips held parallel with the roulade.

In a bowl, mix together the contents of the tubs of dip with the crème fraiche and spread this over the entire surface of the cheese roulade.

Roll up the roulade lengthways, and away from you, and slip it onto a serving plate. Leave the roulade still wrapped in its parchment until you are ready to serve it, then slip it out of its paper on the serving plate.

Slice thickly to serve.