As it is the week after Thanksgiving and thus, the time for leftover turkey recipes, I wanted to post our turkey adventure from tonight’s dinner for you guys.

Just to brief you:

1. It was delicious.

2. Wyatt and I had some quality kitchen time together.

3. We have plenty of leftovers for another great meal.

4. Giada De Laurentiis is my current foodie crush.

Even though we didn’t make our own turkey for Thanksgiving dinner (we made it the previous week), we brought home leftovers from the in-laws. It was great that day, and hopefully my mother-in-law won’t take offense, but I think it was even better tonight!

We started with this recipe from Giada, and per me, we mixed it up, as usual.

(of course, part of the reason we had to mix it up is because we didn’t have the bowls it called for)

We ended up making it like this:

First, we cooked up 4 slices of bacon in a skillet, you can chop it before or after. I chopped it before. When it’s done, set it aside to drain.

Then, I cooked half of an onion, about a cup of chopped carrots, and 2 tbsp of butter for about ten minutes until it’s tender. I added 1/4 tsp dried chopped thyme, 1 tsp salt, and 1 tsp pepper. Note: by this time, your kitchen will smell delicious. Try not to eat everything before it’s done cooking.

While that was cooking, Hubs got home from work and asked if he could help. Yes! This was turning out to be a pretty big job and I hadn’t even started on the crust yet.

So, Wyatt followed this part of the directions pretty much exactly, but here’s what we ended up doing.

• 3/4 cup flour, plus extra for dusting
• 1/4 cup cornmeal
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 ounce (2 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
• 1 cup grated Parmesan
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

We don’t have a food processor, so Wyatt mixed this up in our mixer (the beautiful yellow one I love so much). Mix the dry ingredients together first and then add the butter and cheese, stirring it until the mixture is combined and crumbly. With the machine running, he added 1/2 cup buttermilk and the oil, letting it mix until it formed a ball.

He rolled out the dough into a 12-inch diameter circle, about 1/2-inch thick.

In the meantime, I was busy adding 2 tbsp flour and 2 1/2 cups low salt chicken broth to my skillet. Basically, it makes a roux, so you want to cook the flour in the carrot and onion and butter for a minute or two before adding the chicken stock. Then we added the bacon, 1 cup of peas, 1 cup of corn, and 3 cups of turkey (cut in small pieces or shredded) to the filling mixture.

Then I poured the filling into my baking dish.

Then he put the crust on top of the baking dish, like this.

And it was ready to bake, in a pre-heated 400 degree oven.

 

By this time, Wyatt was super hungry and didn’t want to wait. But it doesn’t take that long, and it gives you time to clean up, considering this recipe made a huge mess in our kitchen.

Wyatt accused me of being a messy cook, which offended me at first. I’m not that bad. But then I looked around and realized that instead of being upset, I should just admit, agree, and start cleaning. It was a mess, and I might as well give in to it. I’ll chalk avoiding that fight up to simply being realistic and not wanting to make a fight out of an innocent comment. That’s a choice we all have so often. I only wish I had the self control to always choose sanity. I guess that’s something that comes with more marriage experience…

…So we cleaned and Wyatt did dishes. (I didn’t even ask him to, he’s so good about that. I hope that’s not a “newlywed thing” he outgrows some year down the road.)

And pretty soon (after about 20 minutes), this happened:

And then it was time for this.

(Keep in mind, since we didn’t have individual ramekins, we had to scoop it out and serve it in bowls, which resulted in having to spoon out the filling around the crust layer in our bowl. But it’s still yummy, so don’t worry about that.

And if we make it again, we’re going to add potatoes, which we’d boil first and then add into the filling mixture I’d also use less peas and maybe add other veggies. Be creative, you can do whatever veggies you like best!

Either way, it was a fabulous way to use up our turkey (not all of it, we saved some for sandwiches!) and had fun in the kitchen. There’s nothing like a meal prepared with kisses and flirting in the kitchen. It makes it taste better, trust me.

How great is it to be a newlywed and not only be “allowed” but also “encouraged” to make out while cooking?

I think we’ll be like that forever. I just made an executive decision. I better go tell Hubs.