The roulade was the richest dish, in flavor and investment, that I've ever made. Liz and I each had a 4-ounce pinwheel with a quarter cup of the demi-glace based sauce and it was an effort to finish the portion. Not so much a stuffed stomach as overwhelmed taste buds. All that flavor! Nothing subtle here, it is as though you are channeling the soul of the force-fed goose that sacrificed a liver for the sauce.
(A playboy gander awakes in a cheap Taipei hotel after an attempted fling with a ready-to-cook tender gosling. Everything's a blur. He's very cold. Everything looks white except.............the rosy ice water surrounding him. A sharp pain! Larry the gander slowly pulls himself from the bathtub, ice cubes clanking against the enamel like satanic windchimes. He shudders, cold, aghast sighting the crudely sewn scar on his torso. On the bathroom mirror is a message hastily scrawled in beakstick....)
The experience of the sauce is worth the price. Each component takes center stage for a minute in the saute, then bows and introduces the next act. It passes quickly, the olfactory equivalent of a flambé and then, as the crescendo of anticipation peaks, the roulade is cut and the entree is plated.
For an insane moment, I pictured myself an army cook, moonlighting for nighthawks in an all-night diner, grubby cigarette butt, long ash dangling as I robotically poured the perigourdine over the top of the roulade, incredibly vulgar for a kingly dish. I quickly recovered and flipped the roulade to expose the meticulously executed spirals of brown, green, and white.
The yellow wax beans on the other side of the plate gave sufficient yang.
6:26:10 AM 
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