cook: turkey bone broth

I was hoping for leftover thanksgiving turkey, but didn’t take any from either family and friends feasts—I knew they were wanting to eat leftovers too in order not to cook. And then last night, Cecilia did give me the giblets, a couple cups of dark meat and the bones and carcass of the roast bird, which I boiled last night for a couple hours.

Glorious, oily, gelatinous poultry bone broth. The contents in the pot above are going to turn into a base for another dish with its Jello-like consistency when chilled. At some point in my home cooking career, I'm going to have to attempt soup dumplings or xiao long bao, but I'm back at school and therefore have no time for pleating and crimping, let alone making from scratch, dumpling dough. For this week, a dish made from this bone broth is gonna be not quite soup, and not quite stew, but something in between as I will be reminded to cook it every time I open the fridge door and see these quart jars of aspic.

We did eat leftover turkey after all. I made a turkey potpie with the leftover turkey, giblet gravy, and mashed potatoes to which I added green peas. And leftover cheesy creamed kale gratin, which I had made again for Friendsgiving, but this time with only 2 cups of milk, 4 ounces of Emmenthaler and Gruyere cheese. Same roux with chopped cloves of garlic, butter, flour and nutmeg. Same big bag of kale. But the gratin was made with saltine crackers, crumbled coarsely by hand with the 5 teaspoons butter, a teaspoon of honey, and a teaspoon of Dijon mustard.              

 

This cracker topping turned out ¡muy delicioso!

I so love the vegetable-dominant mac 'n cheese without the mac. I wonder if cauliflower cooked this way would also taste delicious.