Leftovers on Top of Leftovers

I love Thanksgiving food, I’m not fond of its aftermath: leftovers. I can do leftovers any other day of the year, up to one day left over of foods. For some odd reason, Thanksgiving food does not taste good to me, day after. Unless, it’s the Green Bean Casserole, now, that always taste good left over – especially in the mornings for breakfast.

This year, we were left with a lot of leftovers. See, I don’t cut recipes in half because I suck at math. Most of the recipes I found were made for the holiday feast feeding 8 or more folks. We hosted four people plus us, so that’s six and we still had enough to do the whole shebang over again.

Friday, I pulled out all the leftover Tupperwares from the fridge to see what I had on my hands. There was the chipotle whipped sweet potatoes, orange-cranberry sauce and of course turkey. Hmmm, risotto?(!)

I rarely make up recipes on my own – I think it has to do with my poor math skills again and fear of coming up with something yucky. But it was Friday and what else did I have to do? Papa Johns is across the street, so why not experiment?

6 cups of chicken stock
2 cups of sweet mashed potatoes
4 tablespoons of butter
1 tablespoon of chopped herbs (sage, thyme, rosemary, basil)
1 small onion minced or chopped
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 cups of Arborio rice (risotto)
1 cup of dry white wine (this was also a leftover for us)
1 ½ cups of shredded cooked turkey
1 cup of cranberry sauce
1 ½ cups of parmesan cheese
Salt and pepper
And a ton of arm muscle, here we go:

Whip together sweet potatoes and chicken stock in a large saucepan until boiling over medium heat and then bring down to a simmer. Keep this simmering, the rest of the way.
Meanwhile melt butter in a small saucepan with herbs over medium heat until butter is browned. Cover and set aside.
In a large frying pan or if you have one, a risotto pan heat up olive oil and add onions. Cook on medium high heat until onions are translucent. Then add rice, cook until rice is translucent. Add wine and stir until wine is absorbed.
Now, here comes the fun and hardworking part of the game.
Add 1/4 a cup of your sweet potato/chicken stock mix that is simmering to the rice. Stir until liquid is absorbed.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat.
You get it, repeat until half the stock is gone. Add turkey. Stir. (yes, your arm will hurt) Back to the stock – keep adding ¼ a cup of stock to your rice mixture and STIR that puppy.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Add in cranberry sauce to your rice and stir that sucker. You may have some stock left over – keep going until you run out of stock. This point, you’re looking at 40 minutes into it and can add salt and pepper to taste. Stir and stir. Now taste it. If the rice is still hard – you need more stock or you can do water or you can do more wine. Whatevs your fancy.
At final stage add cheese and you guessed it, stir. The dish should be creamy and yummy looking at this point and you are almost finished…

I serve mine in warm bowls, it works without as well but I like to be semi fancy and love a warm bowl in my lap on the couch (yeah that’s how we eat risotto in our house). Pile risotto in bowls. Now for the best part ever, if I do say so…remember that herb butter we melted? Drizzle it on top of your risotto servings.

Oh YUMMY. Mama liked. So did Papa if we want to keep that analogy and include Cowboy. And I can eat risotto leftovers for days!