leftovers: the reckoning

everyone has their own favorite leftover recipe. undoubtedly most of you are wrong. here's two i did today.

turkey omelet.

when using up leftovers , and even in general, most people favor the white meat. this is an inexplicable, illogical choice. juicy white meat is a thing of joy, but it is as rare as the giant rat of Sumatra. when eating day old turkey the instances of juicy white meat shrink. this is why our glorious french god invented gravy and cranberries. this recipe is a thing you can do with white meat other than wishing it was dark meat.

2 tb turkey fat skimmed from stock, below.
3 eggs, beaten, with some  milk, maybe two tb, season with rosemary, thyme, garlic salt, pepper to taste
1/4 cup broccoli casserole, or a sane amount of gravy, nuked for like 30 seconds. i should probably do the recipe for the casserole first but i didn't cook it.
like a handful of white turkey meat in small chunks, also warmed up a bit.


preheat a big heavy pan, then melt the turkey fat into it. when it has heated to the point where water jumps when you sprinkle it in the pan, add the eggs and turn the heat down to medium. when the eggs start to form the shell, lay the casserole onto a less done part, then sprinkle on the turkey. fold over and let cooking complete, slide onto your plate.

turkey soup.

stock:
half an onion cut up roughly,
6 cloves of garlic
1 stripped turkey carcass
drippings from the turkey not used in gravy or pot pie. maybe like a quart or two, including some veggie stock and some wine.

soup:
half a bag of pearl onions, maybe like 10 or 15
4 white mushrooms
4 crimini mushrooms
a head of garlic
like 2 cups of small chunks of white turkey meat
2 potatoes cut up to half in pieces
the heart of a celery bunch and 2 stalks of celery
2 bay leaves
half a bunch of fresh dill
rosemary, thyme, parsley, pepper
1 c of some kind of small pasta

to make the stock:
strip the carcass. cut up the onion and take the piths out of the garlic. trow into a large pot with the turkey renderings and the carcass, and turn on the heat to high. when it starts to boil fill the pot with water. boil for  a few hours. go watch a movie or something i don't care. when it has reduced by an inch or two, strain off the carcass and the veggies and discard. return the stock to the pot and let cool, then skim off the fat into a container. save and use instead of butter when cooking.

soup, there it is:
peel the pearl onions and the garlic. cut the garlic in half to depith. trow into a big stock pot with maybe a half cup of olive oil and turn on a medium high heat. cut up the mushrooms into sixths, cut the celery into 1cm disks. throw in with the onions etc. stir a lot. throw in the cut up potatoes. start adding the stock. throw in the turkey meat and the spices to taste. cut up the dill and throw that in throw in the rest of the stock and fill the pot with water, simmer until reduced by an inch. taste that shit and see if its good. throw in the pasta. when its done eat it, ideally with a salad because lets be honest, you haven't had anything fresh in days and you are starting to smell of death.

whisking like a mofo

thanksgiving leftovers extraordinaire: turkey pot pie.

reserve 2 cups of drippings, stock, and wine from yesterday.
2 stalks of celery, cut small
2 potatoes, cut medium sized
like 8 smashed garlic cloves
6 mushrooms cut into like 6?
two handfuls of leftover turkey
half an onion
1/4 cup flour, packed
1/4 cup butter
pepper to taste
your favorite pie crust and topping

first make roux.

preheat oven to 425

melt the butter in saucie over a medium heat. when it starts to steam add the flour and start whisking. whisk. WHISK! you will eventually smell the smell you smell when you make kraft mac and cheese. keep whisking and cooking for a while. let the roux start taking on a light brownish color, and start smelling a more nutty flavor. take it off the heat. intermittently keep whisking it while you do all this other stuff to keep the fats and flour together.

basically boil all the veggies in the reserved drippings etc. if you want to do this right, brown the onions and garlic and mushrooms in a pan first but fuck it, im hungry. moving on.

by now the roux should be getting toward room temperature. add a bunch of black pepper to the broth. add the turkey to the broth. turn off the heat, and stir in until the boiling stops. get the roux into the broth using a rubber spatula. stir in until everything tightens.

here's how you should do the crust: seperate.  i cooked everything together. this was an error. still tasty. not a critical one. i was hungry. shut up. you whore.

get your favorite pie crust. put it into a tin or glass pie thingy. poke with fork, or weigh with beans in tin foil. bake for like ten minutes max. when its done, fill with the filling. now top with more crust, or use biscuits. bake until its done, probably ten more minutes.

serve that shit. eat it and love me. LOVE ME FOR THE DELICIOUS FOOD.

thanksgiving food

my wife apparent and i did thanksgiving with her grandmother this year. her grandmother is a classy lady and we collaborated on the food.

turkey

someday soon i will brine a turkey but there wasnt time this year. we just rinsed the turkey and stuffed it and put it on 250 the night before, at like 2:00pm she turned up the heat and pulled it out at 2.30. this worked pretty well but we had to reheat it at like 6  which made the skin a bit tough, but it was still crunchy so i was happy. we must have gotten like two quarts of liquid out of it which was way too much for gravy so we'll be making soup tomorrow. be that as it may, the gravy was amazing.

i based this on alton browns gravy recipe, but he dosen't give these measurements, or many measurements at all. thus my rewrite. one word about wine. when you cook with wine the quality of the wine is important. we used a shitty rose, and it was pretty good, but a nice red would probably have been nicer. the other thing is in alton brown's recipe he uses all the liquid from the turkey. as i noted, there was way too much, so i think very little of the wine ended up in the gravy. when you do it, try to keep the deglaze liquid seperate and then add equal parts deglaze liquid and drippings liquid.

1/3c flour
turkey drippings
1c red wine
2c broth

take turkey out of pan, pour out liquid into a container. let it separate. if you have a fat separator, pour off 1/3c of it. if not let it settle and skim off the same amount. now put the roasting pan back on the stove on medium heat and add wine and stock, then whisk until all the burney bits come loose. add into the drippings, or else put aside. not in the roasting pan or in a sauciee if you have one, add the skimmed fat over medium heat. add the flour slowly until it is all in, and just whisk likek a mofo. let the roux toast a bit until it reaches a color you like, then begin adding the drippings and the deglazing liquid. whisk it in slowly until the gravy is a good consistency. feel free to add salt pepper and herbs, but i thought itr was just a great, turkey bomb in my mouth as is.

carrots. dis grandmother hates carrots, and so does di, so they just basically steam or boil them and serve. i saw room for an improvement. i found this recipe and it was pretty good, though i think it might have been better toasted in the broiler a bit to add some channelization. ftw.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/orange-glazed-carrots/detail.aspx



Ingredients

2 bags carrots
1/4 cup orange juice
3 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons butter
1 pinch salt
Directions

Place carrots in a shallow saucepan, and cover with water. Boil until tender. Drain, and return carrots to pan.
Pour orange juice over carrots, and mix well. Simmer over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Stir in brown sugar, butter, and salt. Heat until butter and sugar melt.

i was put in charge of the sweet potatoes with marshmallows this year, as they didn't do it in previous years.  again, time was pressing, so i shamelessly ripped this off the internet. the only thing i did differently was that i used 2 tbps of eggnog instead of vanilla.

http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1850,146170-245195,00.html

SWEET POTATO CASSEROLE WITH
MARSHMALLOWS
8 average size sweet potatoes
1 tbsp. vanilla
3-5 tbsp. sugar (to taste)
1/2 stick butter
1/4 tsp. cinnamon to taste
1/4 - 1 tsp. nutmeg to taste
1/4 c. orange juice to taste
Marshmallows (lg. or miniature)
Cinnamon sugar (opt.)

Boil (or bake) sweet potatoes until done. Remove peeling from HOT POTATOES and mash well, removing all strings. Add all ingredients but marshmallows and cinnamon sugar; mix well. Spray or grease lightly Pyrex or Corning dish. Put a layer of potatoes, layer of marshmallows until filled. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar for added flavor. Bake about 350 degrees until HOT. Remove from oven and put marshmallows on top. Place again in oven to brown lightly. Serves 10 to 12.