It’s that time of year again: the season when you’re just finishing the first 75 pounds of leftover turkey when the time comes to plop another one in the oven and endure another several weeks of leftovers. So after you’ve done turkey salad, turkey tetrazzini, turkey pot pie, turkey fritters, turkey croquettes, turkey thermidor, turkey soup, and turkey pudding, what do you do with those last, stubborn bits?
I decided to come up with something that’d give you the turkey-and-stuffing experience without having to go to all the trouble of making stuffing. I’m not generally big on brand names, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, but I’ll make an exception here for Thomas Corn Toasting Bread, and for good reason. Whatever you don’t use for the recipe can be toasted and slathered with butter (or used to sop up the leftover gravy), and enjoyed thoroughly. It’s some good stuff. Mind you, it should not be confused with Thomas Corn Toast-R-Cakes, which taste like… well, like you just spilled cream corn on your countertop, wiped it up with a kitchen sponge, and then stuck the whole mess into the toaster instead of the trash.
Having clarified that, let’s move on to the recipe, shall we? You’ll need:
1 loaf Thomas Corn Toasting Bread
1 container of good, store-bought, turkey gravy*
A decent quantity of leftover turkey
Some chopped onion
Some chopped celery
A teeny bit of butter or margarine
A handful of crushed walnuts
Dried apples
A dash of each of the following: Fresh-ground pepper, tarragon, sage, thyme
Giblets (optional)**
Cut the turkey into whatever size pieces you’d like to see on your sandwich, and set it aside. In a frying pan, saute your onions and celery in the butter, tossing the apples and walnuts in toward the end to moisten the apples and make the walnuts nice and toasty. Dump contents of gravy jar or can into microwave-safe bowl, followed in turn by the spices.
The sequence of the next two steps may have to be altered depending on whether your house/apartment was wired before or after the first Nixon administration. If you can run the toaster and microwave at the same time without tripping half your breakers, nuke the stuff in the bowl as the bread is toasting. If, on the other hand, your television or pets will explode when you run both, nuke the stuff in the bowl first, then toast the bread.
Anyway. Mix the stuff in the bowl vigorously, or maybe not-so-vigorously if you’ve just gotten home and don’t feel like doing anything more vigorous than opening a beer and turning on the television. Nuke, covered, for as long as it takes for everything to get nice and hot. You know, sandwich-temperature. Put the bread in the toaster, one slice per serving, or two if you like more bread (works better open-faced). Commence toasting, since the bread will taste better and won’t turn to mush under the gravy. Portion out the stuff from the frying pan onto the bread, followed by the pile of stuff in the bowls, and enjoy.
*Certain readers will cringe at the thought of using store-bought gravy. If you’d like to make your own, go right ahead. If you’ve ever had my gravy, you’ll know why I buy mine.
**If you’ve bothered setting aside the giblets for this recipe, marvel at the fact that anybody bothers with parts of the turkey that nobody–not the turkey’s mother, not God himself–can identify, and then throw them away, thankful for the fact that you didn’t have to use them.