Recipe: Smoked Salmon & Potato Roulade

For Four.
Ingredients: 2 medium Potatoes (something relatively waxy like King Edwards are fine for this); 4 slices Smoked Salmon; 3 oz melted Butter; 2 tablespoons finely chopped Chives; 12 oz Cream Cheese.

Method:

1. Peel the Potatoes and slice them wafer-thin on a mandolin, or using the appropriate blade in a food processor (a mandolin is preferable). Spread the slices out on a baking sheet which has been lined with aluminium foil and greased. Brush the slices with melted Butter on both sides, and sprinkle very lightly with fine salt. Bake twenty minutes or so in an oven pre-heated to 190 degrees C; take them out when the edges start to go brown. The slices should still be quite soft and malleable, and the edges slightly crisp.

2. Line a swiss-roll tin with cling-film, ensuring you have a good two inches or so overhang of cling film all round.

3. Empty the cream cheese into the swiss roll tin and spread it carefully to fill the entire rectangle of the tin.

4. Press the slices of Potato into the Cream Cheese, letting them overlap slightly, like scales. Once the cheese is entirely covered, place another sheet of cling-film over the top, press it into place and carefully invert the cheese and potato slab so that the potato layer is now on the bottom.

5. Remove the cling-film from the top of the Cream Cheese, then sprinkle it with Chives, and lay the slices of Smoked Salmon over the top.

6. Carefully roll the whole thing up, starting with one of the short sides. Roll quite tightly, so you end up with a compact roll, but don't roll so tightly that the Cream Cheese starts to ooze out.

7. Keep the roulade wrapped in cling film in the fridge until you want to serve it. Then slice through the cling film to make eight slices - two each - remembering to remove the cling film before you serve it. Grind black pepper generously over each plate before you serve.