Thanksgivng: Turkey Roulade w/Swiss Chard

Restaurant or home cooked meal? Which would you pick on Thanksgiving? There was some debate this year about what to do because of the renovations occurring on Spartan Drive. We got invites to other people's houses, dinner out at restaurants, but I had to get serious, politely decline and make it happen. So while in Lowes buying paint for the bathroom redux, I flipped through a Food Network magazine and had dinner planned in a matter of minutes - turkey roulade, pear and pecan stuffing, lemon maple squash and fresh green beans.

(I'm not doing full directions on this because its a little wordy so here are picture steps and then if you want the recipe I'll share!)

Here are all the ingredients and the recipe needed for the turkey roulade with swiss chard.

Below is the 8lb boneless turkey breast that was a tad difficult to find. Who knew that grocery store butchers aren't really butchers anymore - something about lawsuits. So my dad and I trekked up to the happiest place on earth, Carfagnas! A slight exaggeration but man this place is great - its a butcher shop, Italian grocery store, caterer. We've been going there for years to get pizza dough, fresh meats and other great treats! Anyways this is the turkey, i picked out that they then deboned for me. I'm such a dork, I wanted to take a picture of the deboning or get back there with the guy and try it myself.

Next up, I had to remove the skin from the turkey (for later use).

Once the skin was removed, I wrapped it in plastic wrap and pounded it out with a meat mallet (conveniently bought the night before!). This step was quite the work out to get the turkey breast flattened to less than 1/2 inch thick.

Once flattened out, it was time to make the filling, which consisted of chopped swiss chard (below), pancetta bacon, arborio rice, parsley, Gruyere cheese, scallions, fresh rosemary, red pepper flakes, basil, nutmeg, ground pepper, egg, salt and pepper. Once it was all chopped and mixed, it was piled on top of the turkey breast.

Next I covered the turkey with the skin removed earlier. Then I rolled the turkey up and tied it with butcher's twine/rope. Whatever you do not use colored rope because it will turn the dish that color. Imagine Bridget Jones Diary when Bridget uses blue string when making leek soup - it was not pretty. Anywho, once tied, it was placed on a rack in a shallow baking dish. Several cups of water and a bottle of white wine were then poured into the dish and it baked for about 2 hours.

This is what it looked like sliced and round 1 of ravaging it.

And this was how little was left over. I'd say it was a success considering how there were only 6 of us!