Chicken/Turkey, chestnut, leek and pasta ‘al forno’

We have had fantastic fun this year cooking new dishes with some great products.  We have also spent a lot of time trying to reduce our food waste by making sure that we have some plans (at least some idea) what we might do with any left overs from a cook.  Taking this one stage further we have used one of the food ideas that the Italians are famed for.  They often simply cook some extra food to make sure they have leftovers to use for another dish.  They call these ‘Avanzi’ – which although it translates as ‘leftover’ sounds so much more affirmative!!

Here is the perfect example of a dish which you can really only make with ‘Avanzi’ – in this case cooked turkey breast (though chicken or other white meats would work just as well) with chestnuts.  They just require the planning to make sure plenty is cooking in advance to make sure there is enough ready for this second dish!

This particular recipe is a reworking of a Jamie Oliver recipe for leftover leek and turkey pie.  We have kept the leek and turkey elements but substituted pasta and a sumptuous crispy cheesy topping for the pastry.  This therefore gives you a silky rich leek sauce with generous chunks of turkey and chestnuts with go to form the basis of a ‘pasta bake’.  Rather than doing the pasta in layers as in a lasagna, it is just stirred through the sauce before topping the dish off with cheese and breadcrumbs.  Other than cooking the pasta (which is best done on a conventional hob) this dish can be cooked in the BGE or a domestic oven.  I favour the BGE for the hint of smoke it offers the dish.  The BGE also retains the moisture so much more than a domestic oven which I think works well for this dish.

The first thing to do was to cook and chill around 130g of pasta, the recipe works well with penne or fusilli, but any short pasta will work.  The pasta is cooked ‘al dente’ then chilled as the final part of the cooking will occur in the sauce.

Traditionally the leek sauce would be started off by frying some pancetta/lardons in a pan and then adding the leeks.  In the spirit of ‘Avanzi’ we used some sausage meat we had in the fridge after making stuffing balls to have with the turkey the day before – but equally some of those stuffing balls broken up would have done just as well.  The first stage was cooked over direct heat.  Once in the pan and coloured, 500g of chopped leeks were added with some thyme leaves (fresh or dried will work) and some olive oil. These were sautéed at a medium heat for a few minutes.  The heat was then turned down by adding the platesetter and converting to indirect cooking.  The leek mix was seasoned and covered to cook for around 30 minutes.  We checked and stirred the dish every  5-10 mins to make sure nothing was sticking or taking on too much colour.

This whole process reduces the bulk of the leeks by about two thirds.  At this point we added the turkey torn into chunks, and some cooked chestnuts left over from the roast turkey dish the night before (fresh vac-pac chestnuts would be fine too if you have no left overs).  As the turkey and chestnuts were warmed through in the sauté pan, a tablespoon of cornflour was stirred into some cold turkey stock. (This was made from the bones of the turkey on this occasion but a stock cube or a ‘stock pot’ would work).  The stock/cornflour mix was then stirred into the pan and was kept gently moving until it began to thicken at which point the nearly cooked chilled pasta was added to the mix.
It is important to make sure it is all well covered in the sauce.  You may need to add a little more stock if there is not enough sauce to go round all the pasta.  Everything should be coated coated with the sauce, but it is just as important that everything it is not immersed by the sauce!

And now the work is nearly done!  The temperature of the BGE was brought up to around 170C.  The mix was put into an ovenproof roasting dish. Some breadcrumbs were added, followed immediately by the torn or sliced mozzarella.  Then for a crispy top, more breadcrumbs and the parmesan.
Finishing took around 30mins until the core temp came to around 85-90C and the top was nicely coloured.  Sometimes getting a nicely coloured top in the EGG  is a little difficult.  If this is the case don’t despair!  Two minutes under a domestic grill (or in a pizza oven if you have one to hand) will sort that out very easily!!

Allow to cool for 10 mins ……………..

……………perfect with a fresh salad!!