Bad Reputation

So I'll be the first to admit that when I hear the words "left-overs" I still shudder. The never ending horde of food that you hate to waste but are so tired of eating. After Thanksgiving, this is doubly so, I look at the metric ton (ok, more like 15 lbs...but that is still A LOT!) that my Granny sent home with me the other day.

I can only blame media, TV in particular, for our cultural disdain for leftovers. Granted, after decades of eating uninspired meals of repurposed foods just to get them out of the refrigerator, most young people understand how horrible it can be to eat turkey everyday for a week.

Instead of looking at leftovers as a bad thing, we should look at leftovers as raw ingredients for tasty meals if we only dare to imagine. Today we'll go into one of the easiest re-purposing of food that I know, the fritter.

Leftover Fritters

Tools:

Cutting Board

Knife

Frying Pan

Spatula

Cover for the Pan

Ingredients:

1.5 cups of cooked and cooled mashed potatoes

1/2 medium onion, chopped

1 cup of turkey, chopped up

1 large spoonful of gravy

1 large egg

olive oil

Time to make a mess:

First off, put the egg, gravy, and mashed potatoes into a large mixing bowl. Chop up the onion and turkey into fine bits (fine = small. small = reasonable size so it will mix in. If you spend more than ten minutes cutting, you've just murdered the onion.) Add the onion and turkey to the bowl.

Before you get your hands messy, which is half the fun of this dish, you will want to put the skillet onto medium heat and add some olive oil, enough to cover the bottom of the pan in a thin layer so you can slow fry your fritters.

Wash your hands and then dive into the bowl with your hands. (Really, what kind of sicko are you that you don't wash your hands? Are you four years old again? Huh? I didn't think so.) Mix everything into the bowl together so it begins to bind together, your hands of course being a mess. When everything is mixed, begin to form small flat patties out of the mixture. I have medium sized hands so my patties are probably just a little larger than they have to be. (I tend to make one or four fritter people that have horribly short lives before the 'monster' crushes them. Sound effects included.)

As you make the fritters, add them to the pan with about an inch between each fritter. If you have a small pan, you might have to do two batches, but that is alright. Better to do two batches than to screw the entire dish up. Cover the pan and turn the burner down to medium-low and leave the fritters alone. DO YOU HEAR ME! LEAVE THEM ALONE! Seriously, if you poke and prod the fritters before they brown in the pan they will fall apart, and that is a major mess. Leave the fritters in the pan for about 15 minutes before coming back (I never said this was FAST food, it is GOOD food. I'll have one over the other any day of the week.) and flip them in the pan. If there isn't a lot of oil left, add a little bit to an empty part of the pan by the tablespoon. Be careful about adding too much at the same time, you need to let the oil be hot or it will soak into the food. Oily food isn't very tasty food.

Cover the pan again, and leave it alone for fifteen minutes again. Notice the golden brown? The crisp crust? That's because you left it alone until it was ready to go. If they fell apart, you might need more egg or gravy next time you make this as a binding agent, unless you didn't listen to me and poked and prodded the pan. Did you? Well shame on you, you don't get a cookie now and need to go to the corner. Just pretend you aren't enjoying it.

Pull the fritters out and place on paper towels to pull off any excess oil that you don't need. Serve with some sort of sauce, I'm a fan of chili sauce or ketchup. Well off to cause some more trouble so I get sent to the corner again, until next time, bien camino!