I hope you all had a lovely day yesterday, with good food, good wine and friends and family in fine form. Today is all about recovery mode.
A reviving cuppa, perhaps a brisk stroll, all-day grazing (nothing like a cold pig-in-a-blanket munched whilst deciding what to take out of the fridge) and a Morecambe & Wise Special on the telly.
It’s Boxing Day, and frankly I’d imagine the last thing you’d want to do today is read a recipe, especially one about turkey. You must be sick to the back teeth of the bird by now, and I sympathise with those of you for whom this season brings an endless litany of office turkey dinners, but personally I can’t get enough of it.
It is truly a fine bird, especially when one goes the extra mile and spends a little more on one of the fabulous game-style turkeys like the Kelly Bronze.
My wife and I regularly have a Christmas lunch (yes, even the pudding) a couple of times through the year, as well as on the 25th. It’s too good a meal to limit to just the one annual event, and if you think about it, it’s a little weird too. Imagine only having the Sunday joint of beef once every 365 days. See? Weird. So, turkey is often on the menu at home, even if not as part of a big dinner.
I use it a lot in stews and pies, and it makes a brilliant stroganoff. Its flavour, slightly stronger than many chickens, works well with stir-fries and quick sizzles. It makes brilliant fajitas along with shredded peppers and blackened onions. So, a few weeks ago I decided to concoct a recipe for today using our feathered friend, banking on the fact that the supermarkets will be selling off their stocks at bargain prices. I saw a recipe using a rösti topping online earlier in the year, and it sprang to mind immediately.
I wanted to keep things seasonal, so the turkey will be cooked in a rich velouté sauce spiked with fresh cranberries and soft chestnuts. Adding a lovely crunchy dimension is the topping, an alternative to heavy pastry, which is a rösti-style grated vegetable mixture, bound with a little cheese and butter, cooked to fragrant crunchy-edged perfection, ideal for soaking up all that delicious sauce.
This recipe would also work with diced leftover turkey, which I imagine is sitting in your fridge right now, waiting to be used.
To make this recipe using leftover turkey, just dice the meat and simply make the sauce around the vegetables. Drop in the cubes of turkey at the same time as the chestnuts and the cranberries.
Don’t forget to use that turkey carcass to make a good stock. You don’t have such a brilliant resource in the house very often, and turkey stock is one of the best soup and sauce bases there is, with absolutely bags of flavour.
It might annoy the cat, who’s expecting a yuletide handout, but I strongly suggest the bones all go into a big pan with some onions, carrots, celery, water and wine, to be simmered for a few hours, then reduced, decanted and frozen for those miserable January days when you can’t think of what to cook.
A bit of fried chicken, some mushrooms, a splash of wine, some turkey stock and a spoonful of cream, and you’ve got a delicious quick supper to spoon over buttered rice or pasta. Turkey, the gift that keeps on giving.
Ingredients:
1kg turkey breast meat, cut into cubes
2 tablespoons plain flour
2 tablespoons butter
A splash of olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 stick celery, finely chopped
100ml white wine
600ml turkey or chicken stock
200g vac-pac chestnuts
100g fresh cranberries
Maldon salt and freshly cracked black pepper
A little double cream
For the rösti topping:
125g parsnips, grated
250g carrots, grated and squeezed dry
250g potatoes, peeled, grated and squeezed dry
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
100g mature Cheddar cheese, grated
A little Maldon salt
Extras:
A little fresh parsley, for garnish
A suitable baking dish or four individual pie dishes
Method:
Roll the diced turkey in the plain flour. Gently heat the butter and oil in a wide pan, and fry the turkey until golden on all sides. Remove from the pan and set aside. In the same pan, gently sweat the vegetables until golden and softened, then deglaze with the white wine and reduce by half.
Add the stock and the turkey and bring to a bubbling boil. Turn down the heat as low as possible and simmer for an hour, until the turkey is cooked through and tender, and the sauce thickened and smooth.
Remove from the heat and add the chestnuts and cranberries. Stir in a little double cream and divide the filling evenly between 4 individual pie dishes or into the one large dish.
Heat the oven to 180°C / Gas Mark 4. This can now be chilled overnight, or used straight away.
For the rösti topping, simply mix all the ingredients together in a bowl and season with plenty of salt.
Spoon the rösti mixture over the filling, making it even and neat. Bake in the oven for 25-35 minutes, or until the topping is crisp and golden.
Sprinkle with fresh parsley and serve immediately.
