Thoughts on Thanksgiving Leftovers

Like many others who thoroughly enjoyed themselves cooking Thanksgiving dinner (note to self: need to post my Thanksgiving menu), I soon had the quandary of how to use the leftovers in a creative fashion.  My kitchen is certainly not the scale of Kitchen Stadium, where a recent Iron Chef America holiday showdown between three Iron Chefs and three chefs from Chopped had to battle it out using Thanksgiving leftovers, but I wanted to do a certain amount of experimentation rather than simply rehashing the original meal.

Again, like many others, I checked the "usual" sources for inspiration.  Last year, we enjoyed making and consuming Stuffing-Stuffed Mushrooms, and all it takes to make those is buying some large mushrooms suitable for stuffing, and having leftover stuffing on hand.  I am planning on making Turkey Bolognese using some of my roasted tomatoes along with leftover turkey, and I also think that some kind of Turkey Chili (recipe still to be determined) sounds pretty good as well.  We always enjoy making turkey soup, and this year's batch of stock from the carcass was particularly tasty.

Another leftover that was waiting for transformation inspiration was our green beans, using the recipe Green Beans in Creamy Mushroom Sauce.  Our daughter had chosen this recipe and prepared it herself.  She didn't want to include the dried mushrooms, and instead doubled the amount of fresh mushrooms.  It was tasty, but like everything else from our original menu, made lots of leftovers.  We've never made the traditional green bean casserole a part of our regular menu, but this recipe seems to be a close cousin.  So, when I saw the Second Day Turkey and String Bean Pot Pies recipe on the Food Network site, I thought this could work.  I already had puff pastry on hand, bought in order to make palmiers as an appetizer for Thanksgiving, which were then not needed when we found out that dinner would be just us three. 

So, here is my riff on the original recipe.  These mini pot pies were delicious, as well as being cute as a button!

Mini Turkey Pot Pies

Ingredients:

2 cups leftover green beans
2 cups mixed frozen vegetables (we used Cascadian Organic)
1/2 cup whipping cream
1 cup leftover gravy
1 cup chopped turkey
1 tsp. dried tarragon
2 standard puff pastry sheets

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a medium saucepan, combine leftover green beans, frozen vegetables, whipping cream and gravy, and cook over medium heat till vegetables have lost their frozen look.  
3. Add turkey and tarragon and stir till combined.
4. Cut the puff pastry into approximately 4" squares.  Lightly press a puff pastry square diagonally into a muffin cup, repeating till all muffin cups are filled.
5. Spoon turkey-vegetable filling into the pastry-lined muffin cups, being careful not to overfill.
6. Bake for 30 minutes or until edge of pastry is golden brown.

Note: it is quite likely that you will have leftover filling.  When I made this recipe, I found that I had a bit more puff pastry than needed to fill the 12 muffin cups, so I made another small pot pie in an oval dish using 3 small squares in the base, filling, then 3 squares across the top.  I still had filling to spare, so this will probably become the basis for soup.

Makes 12 muffin-sized pot pies