My husband is a genius and he calls it Pilgrim Pie

A few weeks ago, my husband asked me if we could come up with a way to make something like Shepherds Pie but made with the ingredients for Thanksgiving dinner, or a big turkey feast.  After tossing some ideas back and forth, this is what we came up with:

The following are some general instructions rather than a recipe per se, because if  you want to make this (and let me tell you, it was delicious) you would probably want to tailor it to suit your regular "feast" flavours.

Middle layer:  I cooked up a turkey breast the night before, so that it would be faster when I got home from work.  Then I just sliced it thinly when it was cold.

Bottom layer:  Stuffing - You could make whatever your traditional stuffing is - here is what I did:
Chop up 3 celery stalks and 1 onion into tiny little pieces and saute in a pat of butter (generous) until they are nice and soft.  Add about a cup and a half of broth.  Sprinkle the entire pan with ground sage.  Toss in some "stuffing croutons" (I just chop up some bread into cubes a few days in advance and let them dry out - this time around it was italian semolina bread).  Mix it all up until the bread has soaked up the broth.  Add more broth if your bread is still to crunchy.  Pour this mixture into the bottom of the dish you will be using for your Pilgrim Pie and bake for about 20 minutes at 425F.

Top Layer:  While you are toasting up your stuffing, roast your vegetables at the same time.  I know a lot of people have green bean casserole for their Thanksgiving dinner, but we stick with root vegetables, so this is what I did:  Cut up 5 small white turnips, the 2 largest carrots I have ever seen in my life, and 5 or so parsnips into chunks.  Basically, you would want enough root vegetables (or whatever) to fill a 9 x 9" pan.  Drizzle with a little olive oil, and mix them around to coat.  Roast for 30 minutes or so (I think I had the oven at 425 F).

While the root veg are roasting continuing their extra couple of minutes, layer the turkey on top of your toasted stuffing.  Cover this with gravy (shhh...I used a packet mix...it was a work night).  Then cover the whole thing with the roast veg and bake again for another 20 minutes or so until everything is nice and bubbly and warm and your root veg are soft enough to your liking.

 

This is the best shot I could get of the layers.

Enjoy, my friends.  Enjoy.

Linking this to: The self sufficient HomeAcre - winter hop