Turkey Pot Pies

Day Two:

Mark asked for turkey pot pies for dinner tonight. This is a real change for us. Although I love to cook - bake mostly, my kitchen time was limited to the weekends and the holidays.

He used to do pretty much all the cooking as I was always at work until very late. We were kind of a reversed couple. He stayed home and raised our son - who's about to graduate from college. He cooked and took care of the house while I went out and climbed the corporate ladder. Since I just got off that ladder, I'm now sharing kitchen duty.

In fact, I launched into cleaning and organizing every room in our house to make a clean sweep in all aspects. I'm sure that will come out as I continue to post.

But, let me post a recipe that is a wonderful way to use up leftovers from Thanksgiving. It was adapted from an old reprinted Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, but I've modified sufficiently to make it my own...

First, you need 4-2 cup Ramkins or mini pie tins.

Next, you need to either make or buy pie dough. Here's my favorite pie dough recipe.

Simply Flaky Crust
This recipe came from Shirley Corriher's Cookwise.

2 cups Flour
1/2 cup Flour, instant (Wondra or shake and blend)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 pound butter
8 ounces sour cream
2 Tablespoons milk, if needed

• Mix together flour and salt. Cut butter into ½ inch cubes, add to flour-salt mixture and toss to coat. Place in freezer for 10 minutes.
• Dump the flour-butter mixture on the counter and roll over it with a large rolling pin to flatten butter lumps. Scrape together and roll over again.
• Repeat one more time. Then scrape back into the bowl and place in the freezer for 5 minutes.
• Dump on to the counter and roll and scrape together three more times.
• Place in the freezer for 10 minutes, then gently fold in sour cream. The dough should be moist enough to hold together in a ball. Add milk if needed.
• Divide into quarters, wrap in plastic wrap and stick in the refrigerator for 20 minutes.
  

This is a really great basic pie crust. In fact, I found several old cookie recipes that were essentially using this kind of pie dough as the pastry basis. For that reason, I figure that the basic recipe isn't copyrighted.

Turkey Pot Pie

2-3 small potatoes, cut into small cubes
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 cup chopped celery (I keep chopped celery in my freezer for just these kinds of recipes)
3 med. carrots chopped (I used leftover roasted carrots from Thankgiving dinner and added them after the cooking step)
2-3 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 cups chopped turkey
1/4 cup dried cranberries
Salt and pepper to taste
1 1/2 cups turkey gravy

• Pre-heat oven to 425F.
• Heat the oil over medium high heat. Add potatoes, onion, celery, and carrots. Saute until browned. Add some water to the pan lower the heat and cover. Let simmer until all vegetables are tender.
• Take out one portion of pie dough and roll out 1/2 of it to line 2 cup ramekin. Pinch out folds to prevent dough from getting to thick, trim to top of ramekin. Make sure that all holes are sealed.
• Repeat with other three ramekins.
• Mix vegetables, turkey, and cranberries in a large bowl. Salt and pepper to taste. Divide evenly between four ramekins.
• Ladle gravy over each ramekin dish
• Take out one more portion of pie dough, divide into 1/4 and roll each quarter out to cover ramekin. Trim off dough to edge of ramekin. Cut slits in top.
• Bake for 20-30 minutes until crust is golden brown and delicious and filling is bubbly.

I'm also trying to freeze two of these and will reheat them later. We'll see how that works.