What to do with leftovers... Part 1

Smoked Turkey Dumpling Casserole

 

I recently received a ton of DM's on Facebook basically demanding the recipe.  Mind you, I am a Professional Chef, so it is just natural for me to throw a bunch of ingredients together and it magically works.  So, I'm going to try to write this out to the best of my ability:

4 stalks celery, diced

1 white onion, diced

3 carrots, diced

1/2# white mushrooms, sliced

Saute all of these ingredients until celery, carrots and onion are soft.  The key is to dice them small (brunoise).  Toward the end, add 

2 cloves of garlic, minced.

Splash of Sherry, Cognac, Madiera, or Marsala to deglaze pan

Add the following:

2# diced turkey without the skin

1 cup of petite peas

In a large sauce pan, melt 6 oz butter.  When melted, add 6 oz flour.  Mix thoroughly and allow to get happy in the pan, you don't want raw flour; you are shooting for a blond roux.  Add leftover gravy and heavy cream, half and half or whole milk, about 4 cups of each, combine and allow to get bubbly and thickened.  Fold all of your sauteed ingredients into the sauce.  Taste taste taste...  add salt and pepper as needed, you can also opt to put more herbs and spices in if you prefer, to make it your own.

Place this mixture into a large casserole dish.  If you would like, you can put leftover mashed potatoes on the bottom of the casserole dish and then pour the mixture over the top.

In a bowl:

2 cups AP Flour

1 cup buttermilk

2 ounces melted butter

1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon baking powder

2 eggs

Salt and pepper

Mix dry ingredients thoroughly, and separately combine the liquid ingredients.  Marry both the dry and wet ingredients until everything is combined.  If too stiff, add splashes of buttermilk until it is easily spoonable.  Take two spoons and scoop out the dumplings and place on top until it's all gone.  You can be neat about it by creating quennelles by twirling two spoons to get a football shape, or just glop it on, it's up to you.  

Place into a 375 degree preheated oven (if convection, 350).  Allow to bake for 20 minutes.  Check to see what color the dumplings are before pulling them out.  Sticking a toothpick into a dumpling will help to determine their level of doneness (some of the time).  If you want a more golden color, leave it in for another 7 minutes (my magic number).

[Miscellaneous ramblings alert....]

For Thanksgiving, I smoke two turkeys and I keep a catch pan underneath the turkey to catch as much of the drippings as I can.  This is my liquid gold that becomes smoked gravy or for applications such as this, instead of using canned stock.  This stuff is sitting in my fridge like Turkey Jelly right now, it is so much more flavorful than canned stock. In case you are interested in getting a smoker for home, check out the previous post, there's a link to Masterbuilt; the manufacturer of my two units.  I have a 20" and a 30", along with the cold smoke accessory for my 30".  This year, because I couldn't find my Pecan wood, I used Hickory.  It gave it a much stronger smoke flavor.

Because we end up with two birds, and we are empty-nesters, we end up eating a lot of leftovers.  The other day was a variation of a Hot Brown sandwich.  I didn't bother blogging about it or taking too many pictures, because it was basically a glorified turkey grilled cheese sandwich with leftover gravy poured over the top.  I couldn't get to my bacon, so there was no bacon on it.  My fridge is still pretty full.