Who has leftover roasted turkey in their freezer from the holidays? I do. For the past few years, I’ve turned some of those leftovers into cheesy baked buffalo turkey dip, and it generally coincides with a TV event that calls for extra snacks. Of course, baked dips don’t require any particular occasion – Netflix is a totally legit excuse to make a gooey, cheesy dip too. It’s so fantastic—the very best kind of curl-up-on-the-couch food.
Though I haven’t seen her much over the years, my Belgian aunt is known for her croquettes. She shapes them into short, stubby cigars – a mixture of mashed potatoes and other leftover ingredients that can often be found in the fridge, rolls them in breadcrumbs and fries them in hot oil, which she tests for the right temperature with the handle of her wooden spoon. They’re completely delicious, and the perfect thing to make when you happen to have leftover mashed potatoes and roasted turkey at the same time. (The only time she has made them for me, they were made with mashed potato and roughly or finely chopped turkey.)
At this time of year, assembling multi-course meals for more people than you typically have around the table can be intimidating. And besides the Big Feast, there are dozens of other, smaller dinners that need cooking and parties that need DIY catering, generally under the (albeit festive) duress of the season, and very often for company.
Given the choice of what to eat, W will always choose crunchy fried things and waffles. When he heard the two could be combined, he lost his mind a little and asked immediately if we could go out for brunch. But because I’m not a fan of getting dressed earlier than is absolutely necessary, nor of waiting in line for eggs and breakfast breads I could make myself, I convinced him I could do an acceptable job of it at home.
Turkey has dominated my social media feeds this week, reminding me that (yay!) I had leftovers from our big feasts squirrelled away in the depths of the freezer. (I always roast a larger bird than we actually need, so there’s plenty.) Roasted turkey is infinitely useful – beyond the requisite sandwiches, for which I make an extra batch of Parker House rolls or Julia Child’s sandwich bread, it can be used in curries and casseroles, cheesy baked dishes and croquettes. (And of course soup, with all that stock.) Any meat that has been roasted on the bone tends to have more flavour, and having it pre-cooked is like having your own homemade convenience food, all ready to go. So when the Turkey Farmers of Canada asked me to come up with a few new ideas this season, and I was happy to oblige.
It’s like summer comes crashing to a halt on cue the first week of September – suddenly it’s dark before 8, you need to put your wooly socks on, there are leaves crunching underfoot when I take Lou for a walk, and my garden is giving up. Perhaps most ridiculous of all – it’s only a month until Thanksgiving. (!!!) I do love this time of year though, and all the produce that goes with it, and the way the oven warms the house, rather than just heating it up. It makes me want to cook all over again, even though I never stopped cooking over the summer.
I love a good burger. It may be my desert island food, in no small part because there are so many different ways to make one, so it’s impossible to get bored. Which is a good thing, because as I’m now the parent of a 13 year old six foot tall eating machine who requests burgers and/or pizza for dinner every night by placing (begging) his order the night before, I’ve been coming up with variations on the most obvious burger formula. So when the Turkey Farmers of Canada asked if I’d come up with a recipe using Canadian turkey, it was an easy (and delicious) challenge, and of course I like to support our Canadian farmers whenever I can.
I love that Thanksgiving is a celebration of sameness, that it’s so deeply grounded in tradition that no one will let the turkey dinner menu they grew up with change – ever. There could be a jellied salad jiggling on the table for decades, one that everyone refused to actually eat, and yet they’d all likely freak out a little bit if it disappeared. There’s comfort in routine. At our house, as at many, there has to be turkey. We’re lucky to have Darrel Winter and Corrine Dahm raising turkeys out in Dalemead for the past forty years – a good bird is a great start. But the challenge for most is the managing of a large turkey – the thawing of it, the stuffing, and calculating the roasting time, getting it in and out of the oven – and how between all that to avoid getting up at the crack of dawn to get the bird in. In the past I’ve streamlined things byContinue reading
I’m starting to go back and revisit some of my early recipes, the ones I posted in my toddler stages of blogging, with super-up-close photos (what was I thinking?) and plenty of stories of life with an actual toddler. This was one of the first, posted back in 2009, and if you look back on it, I was all HOW CAN IT POSSIBLY BE OCTOBER? Which I literally said to someone ten minutes ago about it already being almost October. It’s one of those recipes people regularly tell me has become part of their regular repertoire, and so I thought it deserved a do-over. With turkey, winter squash, tomatoes and apples, can you imagine cramming more fall into one bowl? Back in ’09 I made this in the slow cooker, but nowadays I prefer the stovetop – either will do. (You’ll need less liquid overall in the slow cooker, since it’s all contained and won’t cook off.) And while you could use any kind ofContinue reading
