Turkey Cranberry Strudel

Operation use up thanksgiving leftovers, part three. 

Turkey.  What to do, what to do, with those giant chunks of leftover turkey.  The freezer is always an option, true.  Save it for either stock or broth, or even an upcoming soup.   I’ve been seeing a lot of recipes for turkey hash as a creative way to use up the meat after turkey sandwiches lose their appeal.  But as I’m apparently ahead of the hash-trend curve, and having already made up my other go-to leftover user (Turkey a la King), I needed fresh ideas.

Then, like a bright beacon of light, an image came to me…turkey, nuts, cranberries, all encased in a golden shell of….CRESCENT ROLLS!  Yes!  The much esteemed by sissy and me, deliciously kitschy Turkey Cranberry Ring my mom concocted long, long ago, based perhaps on a Papered Chef recipe, was calling to me.  It was then that I knew.  I must make it.  Now. 

It's a fairly simple idea.  Use crescent rolls as pre-made struedel dough, wrapping the rolls around a filling bursting with turkey, nuts, fruit, and a little bit of cheese (because, when does cheese ever hurt?).  You can use whatever is on hand, swapping in what you have and leaving out what you don't.  It's simple to assemble and looks like it took a lot more effort than it really did.  Perfect for a weeknight, or a buffet, or anytime.  

This seriously was an embarrassing combination of leftover bits n pieces we had laying around.  Four old pieces of pre-cut celery that had gone uneaten in the week’s lunches, a hardening handful of dried cranberries left in the bottom of a bag, some aging swiss cheese slices that had outlasted their sliced turkey companions.

But you know what?  You would never know that this delicious combination was anything other than a planned-out dish.  It tastes rich but isn't too unhealthy.  It stretches a lot of odds and ends into several meals worth of food.  Try it with broccoli and cheddar instead of cranberries and almonds.  Or peppers and pepper jack.  Or whatever you have on hand.  Probably due to my inexplicable love for crescent rolls, I bet that whatever you throw down the middle would be good.    

Because I’m cheap, I had saved the lone egg white left over from mixing a yolk into my Shepherd’s Pie potatoes.  That one lone egg white would now be brushed on the top of my log of cranberry goodness, helping it to brown up into a rich, golden, glistening shell.  A shell of love.  The most delicious shell in the world!!!!!!!!!

Really into the hyperbole today, it seems. But describing this odd, lovable recipe calls for a little bit of promotion.  It was a favorite growing up, and it's a favorite still. 

Shepherd’s Pie, or the Home for Leftover Potatoes

Operation use up thanksgiving leftovers, part two: Shepherd’s Pie.

I don’t love mashed potatoes.  They’re alright, I suppose.  When heavily laden with cream and butter and garlic and god knows what else, sure, they can be pretty damn good.  But the usual, more restrained, version just doesn’t do it for me.  I like potatoes plenty, but there are just so many better ways to enjoy them than all smashed up.

Thus, leftover mashed potatoes usually languish unloved in my fridge.  I’ve tried making potato cakes from them, or mixing in the loaded baked potato fixins and heating them up.  You can stir mashed potatoes into soups to thicken up the broth.  There are probably 500 ideas you all have on how to use them up.

Me, I could only think of one – shepherd’s pie.  I had never made one before, so that was a plus, as I’m trying to step outside of the same-6-recipes-I-make-over-and-over comfort zone. I had the basic ingredients on hand – ground beef, carrots, frozen peas, onions, and beef stock.  And I had a ton of mashed potatoes that would invariably be thrown away unless I could make them palatable again.  

A traditionally English dish, shepherd’s pie isn’t something I make, but it speaks to my simple, comforting sensibilities.  A pot-pie like filling on the bottom, browned and creamy potatoes on the top, it is a meal in one dish, and a cheap one at that.  Now that the temperatures are closer to zero than 100, it’s the sort of warm, homey winter-friendly food that I can’t get enough of. 

When "researching" different recipes, I came across this charming story about how shepard's pie got its name because the shepherd's wife would make the pie in the afternoon, but it would stay warm until whenever the shepherd returned home because the rich filling was insulated by the top crust. A good shepherd's pie would stay warm for hours, until the top crust was broken and the steam could escape.  Alton Brown advised cooks to start spreading the potatoes at the edges to be sure you get a good seal going. 

A word of caution, though.  Put a cookie sheet under your dish, especially if you aren't sure if you achieved the proper seal.  We didn't, and I soon heard telltale sizzling letting me know that boiled-over gravy was hitting the oven floor.  At least the smoke alarm didn't go off!  After resting for 10 minutes, we dug into this bad boy with gusto.  It's good.  Just, good.  Not breaking any boundaries, not challenging any traditions.  Just good.  

Cranberry-Orange Compote & Ultimate Thanksgiving Sandwiches

The Ultimate Thanksgiving Leftover Sandwich, version one.

Honestly, I cannot take credit for this genius sandwich.  It was sourced on a Silver Cloud sammich sissy and I shared a few weeks back, when our eager tummies sought a taste of the rapidly approaching thanksgiving holiday.  Served on white bread with canned, jellied cranberries and Stove Top stuffing, it hit a nostalgic spot on the taste buds and got us both salivating for the feast to come. 

When Sunday night following Thanksgiving rolled around and heating up yet another round of leftovers seemed, somehow, boring, I reached into the not-too-deep recesses of my food memory bank and found this sandwich waiting there.  I wanted to copy that interesting, dumbed-down version with the fancy-ass delicious leftovers now crowding my fridge.  So I checked our leftover stock to see if it could be possible: seedy whole-wheat bread, check; sage & mushroom ciabatta dressing, check; lots and lots of leftover cranberry-shallot glazed turkey, check.  Yet, alas!  We had no more cranberry sauce left! 

Boiling away...

A Thanksgiving dinner is nothing without that tiny dollop of tart cranberry sauce.  We always had two in our family – my grandpa’s traditional cooked cranberry sauce, and the tarter orange-cranberry relish that is uncooked.  To properly enjoy your turkey, you needed both.  And to properly enjoy my leftover turkey sandwich, I needed at least one. 

Lacking cranberries, I remembered K’s basic instructions on how to make a chutney – “you need fruit, spices, sugar, and vinegar.”  Would dried cranberries suffice?  I thought I could plump them up by cooking them with some acid and juice.  I threw in a handful of raisins, too, to beef up the berreis’ relatively low number.  A hearty squeeze of lemon juice stood in for the vinegar, and a tangelo (skinned, sectioned, and squeezed) complimented the tart berries with some sweet citrus, instead of sugar.  Oh, and a Tablespoon or so of cranberry juice concentrate and apple jelly added intensity of flavor and a bit more substance, respectively. 

The assembly line

Boiled down until syrupy, this improvised cranberry orange compote really popped.  It just fell in love with the turkey, but I can see this tarty mixture giving herself equally well to a pork tenderloin or perhaps even atop a nice creamy brie....

So on to the sandwich!  First, I set four slices of grainy wheat breat to toast, so that they’d be sturdy enough to hold their husky fillings.  I added a bit of stock to the stuffing to remoisten it, then after heating it up (microwave) I mashed it lightly with a fork – going for a more cohesive, spreadable texture here.  I thinly sliced some white-meat turkey, and then set to assembly: bread, thin layer of mayo, stuffing, turkey, cranberry, bread.  Some reheated green beans went alongside.

This is just a flipping awesome sandwich.  Bright, tart fruit flavors on the sandwich are needed to cut through the relatively heavy layers of turkey and stuffing.  This, dare I say, may have topped the “leftover turkey and plochmann’s mustard on grandma’s dinner roll 4 hours after dinner” as my all-time favorite leftover thanksgiving sandwich.  But, you know, I’m not done with all those leftovers yet either…