I ignorantly voted for this week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe, Cod & Spinach Roulades, thinking it would be a filet of fish stuffed with spinach and how hard could that be. Upon actually reading the recipe my eyes went wide with terror. Fish mousse? Stuffed with spinach & preserved lemons? Wrapped in plastic? And then steamed? How the heck is THAT supposed to work? That’ll teach me to cast my ballot before educating myself on the merits of the candidates.
Yes indeedy, from my perspective, this was one of the most intimidating French Fridays with Dorie recipes yet. I even tried to enlist the help of my trusty sous chef, but he took one look at the recipe and decided that he would prefer to be the photographer. I thought he did a pretty good job.
We took it one step at a time and it actually worked. The individual recipes of fish mousse, spinach filling, and tomato sauce were actually pretty easy. It was more the assembly and cooking method which had me spooked. But in the end, the fish mousse was far easier to work with than I had feared and my plastic wrap held up in the steamer without melting.
I would now love to tell you that the whole thing was a success story and that we loved the finished dish. Sadly, not so much. But this recipe was WAY outside my comfort zone and I enjoyed the trip anyway.
one expat's life 
Yes – I often go into recipes blissfully unaware of what is really involved 🙂
Your roulades do look good – sorry they weren’t a hit for you.
Ack–too bad you didn’t like it, in the end. I, too, voted for this dish before I actually realized what was involved, but that’s not a bad thing. We’d have to do this sooner or later, anyway. Count it in the “weird ones we don’t want to leave until the final month” column.
I thought as you did, that this would simply be some spinach rolled up in a filet of fish. I think that would have been better, prep and taste-wise. It looks like such an interesting dish, but it just didn’t appeal to me. Oh, well, one less “weird one” to worry about!
Your roulades look perfect! Too bad they weren’t a hit! Love your process photos! I enjoyed this dish, but my husband wouldn’t even give it a try! Honestly, I enjoy my fish grilled or baked best!
Yeah, I need to read ahead, too…thank goodness I found my leftover preserved lemons in the fridge! I loved them, but it was a one time recipe for me 🙂
I’m not sure if I voted for it… maybe I’m in denial. Well I’m glad the experience was OK for you. I just couldn’t mousse a lovely piece of fish.
Yep, this one was outside my comfort zone too. And like you, I envisaged fish wrapped around spinach – until I read it. Yikes! Have a great weekend.
Yes, you nailed it, this was an intimidating recipe. I went into it knowing that I probably couldn’t make it work and that doomed me, I think. Your roulades were actually very, very well done. Your husband is a great photographer and he caught everything. Although I thought the mixture was quite tasty, I just don’t know if I can return to perfect the technique. By the way, when I spilled coffee on my computer several, several months ago, I lost the spreadsheet that you had sent me. I was embarrassed to ask you to re-send. Everyone’s busy. But, Betsy is going to forward it to me. I will like having it again as you did a good job. A friend just set up a spread sheet for me on my new computer so I can prepare a budget. That’s NOT so much fun.
I feel like I could have written this post. I shared all of your sentiments about this recipe. And did that stop me from voting for May’s recipes without opening the book to check out my choices? No…
I’m impressed – I didn’t even give it a go. Looks like you did a great job with a sort of weird recipe!
Wow, Rose, I’m impressed! I actually thought the same thing…
We had a wonderful time on our trip & fell in love with Passau and Regensburg. I’m sorry we didn’t get to meet you, but who knows? Maybe one day we will! I’m still jet-lagged, so hope to be back inthe swing of things with FFWD next week. I’ll let you know when I post photos.