Leftovers

Who said leftovers are boring?  Well whoever it was obviously didn’t have a lot of inventive thought in the culinary department.

Using up some of our turkey and ham leftovers from Christmas I followed Nigella Lawson’s recipe for Turkey & Ham Pie (which can be found in Feast: Food That Celebrates Life), it has got to be the ultimate turkey pie recipe.

The pie was much richer than expected, Nigella states the standard recipe would feed six children, more like six adults in my household, it was very very filling but the leftovers – albeit second time round made an excellent lunch the following day with hot crusty bread.

I cheated and decided not to make my pastry from scratch as we had a lot of frozen puff pastry sheets in the freezer. The brand I chose was the organic Dorset puff pastry.  However, I did make my own turkey stock, by following this recipe.  I felt very efficient making such good use of what is essentially a very extravagant buy when all is said and done.

Originally I served the pie with Nigella’s Red Cabbage (recipe also in Feast: Food That Celebrates Life & can be found here which added a real piquancy to the meal, a much needed one. 

Excellent, almost worth cooking a turkey just for this.

The Recipe:

• 45 g butter
• 3 tablespoons plain flour
• 650 ml ham, chicken or turkey stock
• 1 x 284 ml pot of cream
• 400 g turkey meat, in chunks
• 200 g ham, in chunks
• 150 g sweetcorn (I used a tin of baby-corn)
• Sheets of puff pastry 

1. Preheat the oven to 190c or the equivalent (see “Conversions page”).
2. Melt the butter in a decent-sized pan and stir in the flour. When your roux is formed and is smooth and nutty, take the pan off the heat and slowly whisk in the stock, with a little whisk. When everything is smoothly amalgamated, put back on the heat and cook, gently, until it starts thickening. Add the cream and carry on cooking until you’ve got a smooth ,velvety sauce. Add the turkey, ham and sweetcorn then pour into your pie dish. (she and I used an oval dish of about 2 litre capacity).
3. Add a lid of pastry over top and make a few slashes to allow steam to escape.
4. Put in the oven for 20-30 minutes until pastry is golden.

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