Still Thankful, Days Later....
Roast Turkey and Smoked Ham Tetrazzini
I AM FULLY AWARE THAT many of you, such as myself, don't care to see any more turkey meat for a least a few more weeks (or maybe a lifetime). However, since many of you, who were stuck with plenty of leftovers that you either cooked yourself and brought home from someone else's dinner table, has asked me what to do with said leftovers—hopefully thrown them out by now if you haven'tused them—I figured I'd share with you what I did with mine.
So I had a whole turkey leg—perfect, white and dark meat!—and some smoked ham, both leftover from the Thanksgiving meals I bought for myself locally while I hibernated for the rest of the holiday weekend. Monday, I ventured to Food Emporium (where I happily ran into two, separate dear friends, Emily, and Deidre, who I both know from the bar where I work) to get the rest of the ingredients for me to make my Good Housekeeping-style recipe:
1 package broad egg noodles 1 pint container heavy cream 1 can chicken stock 1 small jar mushrooms 1 bag shredded swiss cheese 1 small jar parmesan cheese 1 package of frozen peas & carrots 1 small can condensed cream of turkey soup
Now, I call this a "Good Housekeeping-style recipe" because it's the type of recipe that involves little, if any, real cooking. Instead, I filled one big pot with water and a palmful of salt and brought that to a boil.
While waiting for that to boil, I pulled the turkey meat of the bones and diced that and the smoked ham and tossed those pieces into another big pot over medium heat with some olive oil, salt, and pepper. When the proteins' (meat's) fat started to render, I just kind of threw everything else in except the noodle: half the can of stock, half the package of peas and carrots, the whole can of condensed soup, half the jar of mushrooms, all of the heavy cream, a half a cup each of the parmesan and swiss cheeses. To that I added some flavorings I already had: dried rosemary, garlic powder, teaspoon of yellow mustard, smoked paprika.
Once the other pot's water started to boil, I added the entire package of egg noodles, and let it remain at boil while I occasionally stirred. Once the noodles were about 85% cooked through. I drained them and put them into the pot with sauce (turns out I only needed about half the noodles, but, great, I now have them precooked for future use....), giving them a good stir to coat all the noodles.
I then greased an aluminum casserole with some butter, and poured the contents of of the last pot into it, spreading the warm mixture evenly, and topping it with another handful of swiss and parmesan, and some rye toast that I chopped up, soaked in the other half can of stock, seasons with salt, pepper, sage, and tarragon, and portioned likewise evenly on top.
That all got covered in tin foil and thrown in an oven preheated to 350°, where I let it bake for about 30 minutes before removing the foil at letting it finish for another 10 minutes. I let it sit on the counter for another 10 minutes to set after removing from the oven, sectioned off a corner for myself with a spatula to put on a small plate, then sat to eat.
I was pleased with results; the bite-sized meats kept their flavor and much of their "bite", the herbde rye adding some nice seasonal aromatics to each bite, the noodles stayed firm yet easy to cut and bite through, and the sauce stayed creamy without separating or congealing once it cooled off.
I did wish there were more people around in my building to give the rest of this to; seems, though, that everyone else is as Thanksgivinge-ed out as I am. But I live in a building full of late-nighters; someone's going to wake up with a major hangover before the week's out and are going to want something full of meat, grease, cheese, oil, and bread, and that tastes reeeally good.
And they'll be more than grateful for some tetrazzini then, won't they...?! =)
Bun Apple Tea!
.kac.
Roast Turkey and Smoked Ham Tetrazzini
