Bacon-wrapped veal roulade with marinated mustard seeds and mustard sauce

I love veal but somehow I don’t cook it often, and I really have one veal dish in my repertoire: osso bucco. Recently I took a cooking class at the California Culinary Institute which inspired me to create this dish. Mustard is a great accompaniment for lean meats (for example, I make rabbit or chicken in mustard sauce), and wrapping lean meats in bacon is another trick to make them more juicy and flavorful.

serves: 6-8 difficulty: medium prep time: 2 1/2 hours

Ingredients

For the roulade

8 inch piece of veal tenderloin
16 to 20 thin slices of bacon (get a butcher to slice bacon thinly from a slab rather than buying packaged one which is too thick for this purpose. You want the bacon to be slightly thicker than prosciutto slices)
1 tbs canola or vegetable oil

For the pickled mustard seeds

1 cup yellow mustard seeds
1 cup white wine vinegar
3/4 cups white wine
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cups water, plus more as needed

For the mustard sauce

1 cup veal demi glace (which is already reduced veal stock). You can make your own by reducing 2 quarts of veal or beef stock to 1 cup.
2 tbs whole grain mustard

Preparation

To prepare the veal roulade, first make sure that the tenderloin is roughly the same diameter along its entire length so that it cooks evenly. If there are parts of the tenderloin that are thicker or thinner than the rest, cut them out. Then season the veal tenderloin with 1 tbs sea salt and black pepper.

For the rest of the roulade prep, follow the instructions in the bacon wrapped meat roulade post.

Once you have made the roulade it should look like this.

Since the veal tenderloin is a thick piece of meat, the best thing is to sous vide it before you pan fry it. Place the roulade in a nylon bag, vacuum seal it, and cook at 129 degrees for 2-3 hours. If you don’t have a sous vide machine, it is a worth while investment – particularly for cooking meat. Mine is Joule and I have been extremely happy with it.

While the roulade is in the sous vide machine, you can prepare the pickled mustard seeds. In a saucepan over low heat, combine all ingredients. Bring them to a gentle simmer, and cook the seeds until they are plump and tender, about 1 hour. If too much liquid evaporates, add more water to keep the seeds covered. Cool and store covered in the fridge until ready to use. The seeds will keep in the fridge for a few months.

For the mustard sauce, bring the veal demi glace to a simmer in a sauce pan. Add the mustard and simmer for 10 min. It’s that easy!

15 min before you are ready to serve, take the veal roulade out of the sous vide bag, heat the oil in a fry pan, and place the roulade in the pan. Keep the heat high, and fry until the bacon cooks to crispy. Once the bacon is crispy on one side, turn the roulade and keep repeating until it’s crispy all around.