Friday, December 28, 2012

Nothing boring about these leftovers

This Christmas marked the first holiday celebration in our new house, and rightly so, we insisted on having family over.  For the dinner, I did a full spread including turkey, cornbread dressing, cranberry sauce, spinach gratin, and mashed potatoes.  Yum...  Here's Sean's dad, daydreaming about carving the turkey.





So...it was a wholelotta food, and as hard as I tried, Sean's parents wouldn't take any home.  In all fairness, they had another dinner the day they left, and they'd end up with leftovers from that one.  What do we do with all the leftovers then?

Freeze them?  That's an option, but boring.  Donate them?  As nice as this sounds, you can't donate prepared food unless it's been prepared in a professional kitchen, for obvious reasons.  How about soup, chili, or enchiladas?  I considered it but have used these recipes for holidays passed, and it takes care of the turkey but does nothing for the leftover sides.

With a little research, I came across two recipes that used all the turkey, potatoes, and spinach.

First, I made these turkey turnovers.  It calls for broccoli, which I bought, but if I'd done a broccoli casserole, I could have subbed that for the broccoli and cheese.  They're really good, and I froze several without cooking them.  Now, we can have a quick lunch or dinner for the next few weeks.  All we have to do is take some out and bake them for about 25 minutes. Then, lunch!  This recipe used about half the leftover turkey and some of the cheese left over from making the gratin.  Huzzah!

Next, I made samosas.  The original recipe was from Real Simple, and in my opinion, it's too simple.  If you look at the recipe, you'll see that they don't add any spices or veggies, and I don't need much spice.  But give me a dash of something! When I think of samosas, I also think of delicious pastry dumplings filled with potato and VEGGIES.  Where are the veggies in this recipe?  Exactly.  The general idea is nice, but I had to make several changes.  So, here's my leftover turkey samosa recipe:


Leftover Turkey Samosas

Ingredients

1 cup of chopped leftover roasted turkey (I made sure to use a mix of white and dark meat)
1 cup of any green veggie dish (I used spinach gratin, but you can use creamed spinach, green peas, green beans, or any other green veggie dish)
1 cup mash potatoes
1 teaspoon tumeric
1 teaspoon yellow curry powder
salt to taste

refrigerated pie crust (usually a 2 pack of 9" crust)

Cut the rolled out pie crust into 8 segments and roll each segment out into a triangle.  Set aside.

Combine the remaining ingredients in a bowl and taste to make sure it's seasoned to your liking.  Spoon mixture onto triangles of dough.  Bring edges up and pinch together to form a dumpling.  Bake at 375 for about 25 minutes.  These can also be frozen and baked later.  If freezing, don't thaw to bake.  You'll bake them straight from the freezer but for about 40-45 minutes instead.  Here's a picture of the samosas I baked today.  They came out perfectly and go well with that leftover cranberry sauce.



It was a good holiday, and we'll be eating well in 2013.