Here’s one I’ve made before. In one of my previous entries (6-22: Crispy Chicken Drumsticks), I mentioned doing all the cooking for a family dinner party when I was 12-13 years old with a similarly-aged family friend of mine. 9-20: Meat Roly-Poly is another one of the recipes I remember making for that party.
Another memory from this dinner party: I had just gotten a new CD (Version 2.0 by Garbage) and we were listening to it on my parents’ GIANT 1970s hi-fi stereo system over and over as we spent the day cooking. Gives you an idea of how old I am, and how long I’ve been cooking from this book.
One more memory for you, this time relevant to this recipe: I remember it taking me much longer than anticipated. It was one of my first experiences working with a yeast dough, and I think I failed to take into account how long it would need to rise (it might not have been warm enough either).
Either way, I remember feeling stressed that it was taking too long to make–I don’t even remember if we got it out in time for the start of the party. I have some bad feelings associated with this recipe I think for this reason.
Having MUCH more experience now, almost 20 years and many doughs later, I feel like it’ll go better this time around.
Ingredients. LF milk because that’s what we have, and some big portobello caps that I’m going to dice up for the mushrooms. Panko for breadcrumbs because that’s how it goes.
Melted the butter in my butter melter.
Dissolving the yeast in the butter/milk mix.
Feels a lot like pizza dough. I usually do a cold rise on my pizza doughs, but to a warm place it goes. Cold rises take a few days, so this will have to do.
Slicing up the mushrooms after chopping onions.
Made the broth to add to the (now much smaller) veggies.
Mixed the meat with the egg & panko. Totally forgot to save some egg for egg wash at this point.
Combined the meat mixture with the onion mixture.
After about 40 minutes. Well, it’s definitely bigger. And definitely big enough.
Rolled it out to about the size of my 12″ x 18″ cutting board. Figured that was close enough.
Spread my meat mixture like I’m making a pizza.
Started the roll–so far so good.
Rolled it up and put it on a Silpat–parchment paper or just greasing the sheet works too. The ends look kind of funky, but it’s about slices, not ends. Ends of sushi rolls look weird too.
Grabbed another egg out of the fridge, beat it, mixed in a bit of water, and brushed it over the outside of the roll.
Final step–sprinkled it with sesame seeds. Here it goes. So far, much less pressure and stress than last time.
After its trip through the oven. Well, the crust looks good, and that end was funky anyway. How does the rest of it look?
Another view of the crust. Egg wash gives you that nice shine, and thinning it with water makes it more consistent. It blorped a bit on the side there, but again, it’s about slices–you’ll never know on the final plate.
After slicing through the middle (DON’T do it on the Silpat like I did–you end up slicing your Silpat) for a nice cross-section. Looks less “tight” than theirs, but it’s also pretty juicy.
Final product. I ended up getting about 7-8 slices off of it, not counting the weird ends, it tasted great, and it reheats well in the microwave. It ended up not taking me that long (although time is a funny thing as you get older–it’s definitely relative) and I’m pretty pleased with the results. I’m glad I made my peace with 9-20: Meat Roly-Poly.
Grade: A-
