Turkey Soup
This has to be the best part of Thanksgiving... well... besides all the other best parts, that is... It's hard to top a turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce and stuffing on squishy white bread, but the turkey soup is something I look forward to the minute I start thinking about a turkey.
It's a childhood-memory-thing. Soups were definitely a mainstay growing up and I can see that big oval pot my mother used to cook down the carcass and make her soup. Everything went in it. Just as I make it, today...
I started by simmering the carcass all day yesterday. I threw in a couple of bay leaves, a quartered onion, skin and all (the onion skins help make a nice, deep-colored broth) and the ends of celery and carrots, and a bit of sage. Those trimmings you'd probably toss make for great soup stock.
After straining it, it went into the 'fridge. Today, I scraped off the thin layer of fat and started heating it.
To the pot I added about 3 cups of turkey gravy and then chopped carrots, celery, potatoes, a lot of turkey meat, and all those partial bags of frozen vegetables... peas, corn, green beans, and spinach.
A bit of salt and pepper was the only seasoning it needed.
Soup really may be the easiest food to make - and in our house, at least - the perfect comfort-food when the weather starts turning cold.
I froze half the broth for another soup, another day. I haven't made Mulligatawny in quite a while.....
Sweet Potato Casserole
This is a perfect example of how thought-process-to-meal actually works, sometimes...
I was going to make a cassoulet of sorts for dinner. A quick version. We were decorating and I just wanted to get something in the oven I didn't have to think about. I had a pork tenderloin and a couple of Hungarian sausages that were thawing, pulled down the beans, crumbs at the ready...
And then I opened the 'fridge for butter. And saw the leftover dressing.
The cassoulet started morphing into something completely different. ::: insert Monty Python tagline here :::
There were two big sweet potatoes in the potato basket. I started thinking of layering things...
Into the casserole dish went a layer of stuffing. A bit of gravy went on top just to keep it moist. Atop that went the sliced Hungarian sausages. The pork tenderloin went back into the 'fridge.
I peeled and sliced one of the sweet potatoes and layered it on top. I drizzled it with about a quarter-cup of maple syrup, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, covered it, and put it in the oven at 350° for about an hour and fifteen minutes.
I purposely used the sausage instead of turkey (or the pork tenderloin) to make it seem less a Thanksgiving leftover and more a stand-alone casserole. It had the flavors of fall - with just enough of a twist to make it unique.
I can see a lot of variations on this theme.....