These Turkey Enchiladas with Pumpkin Chipotle Sauce are a great way to put leftover Thanksgiving turkey to good use, but they’re just as good any time of the year. The easy-to-make enchiladas have a turkey filling and are covered with a homemade sauce that uses pumpkin puree and chipotle peppers for a spicy-sweet finish.

When preparing the enchiladas, I start with the sauce. I use canned pumpkin puree, tomato paste, a little garlic and minced chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. I like my enchiladas to be on the spicy side, so I tend to add a little extra pepper to my sauce when I’m making it. Feel free to add a little more (or a little less) as needed when you’re making your sauce. Once the sauce is prepared, fill up slightly warmed corn tortillas with your shredded turkey and cover with the sauce before baking. I typically add a very small handful of cheese to my filling, but I put most of it on top of the dish so that it makes a nice golden topping.

I bake this dish as a casserole, placing my filled corn tortillas in a large baking dish and covering them with sauce. It is an easy way to prepare them, but I find that it also allows me to get an extra few servings out of the dish, which is always a plus if you either have a big crowd to serve or simply like leftovers. I primarily use mozzarella cheese, and I also add some fresh cohita cheese (there are actually many brands of slightly salty fresh Mexican cheeses that you can use in place of the cohita, in case you can’t find it) because it lends a nice saltiness to the mozzarella layer.

If you don’t have leftover turkey on hand, know that this recipe works very well with roasted chicken. It is easy enough to prepare for a weeknight dinner if you’re starting with a roast chicken from the supermarket, too.

Turkey Enchiladas with Pumpkin Chipotle Sauce
1 15-oz can pumpkin puree
1 8-oz can tomato paste
1 tbsp minced chipotle pepper in adobo sauce
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp ground cumin
2 cups chicken stock/broth
4 cups shredded turkey meat
4 green onions, diced
8-10 corn tortillas
2 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella cheese, divided
1/2 cup cohita cheese, or other fresh Mexican cheese
salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat oven to 375F.
In a large saucepan, combine pumpkin puree, tomato paste, chipotle, garlic, cumin and chicken stock. Stir well and bring to a simmer. Cook for 10 minutes to allow flavors to meld.
In a medium bowl, combine turkey and green onions. Add 1/2 cup of the mozzarella cheese and season with salt and pepper. Set aside.
Wrap tortillas in a clean, damp dishtowel and microwave for 40 seconds, or until warm (you can also steam them).
Spread about 1 cup of sauce in the bottom of a 9×13-inch baking dish.
Working with one tortilla at a time, roll a scant 1/2 cup of turkey mixture up in each, then place the tortillas seam-side down in the baking dish. You should be able to fit 8-10 tortillas in the dish, depending on how much filling you put in each one and how large your tortillas are. Cover tortillas with all remaining sauce. Sprinkle mozzarella cheese evenly over the top of the sauce. Crumble cohita cheese and sprinkle evenly over mozzarella.
Bake for 25 minutes, until cheese is golden brown.
Serve immediately.

Serves 8-10

Naturally, I wanted to give this pizza a try in my own kitchen so that I could make it any time I was in the mood for a slice – or any time that I had all of the ingredients available and ready to go! I started with my favorite pizza crust recipe. The recipe uses a technique that was developed by America’s Test Kitchen. It produces a light crust with just the right combination of chewy interior and crisp exterior in a very short period of time – and it is all done in a food processor. I definitely recommend this crust, but you can use these toppings with another dough recipe if you have a favorite.

Pancetta is frequently known as Italian bacon. It is cured with salt and seasoned with pepper and other spices, but it is not smoked like American bacon is. Pancetta is typically sold in sausage-like logs, and it can be cut thick or thin, in rounds or in strips, depending on what you want to do with it. In this case, I cooked some small cubes of pancetta in a skillet with a little bit of olive oil until they were crispy and removed them to a paper towel to dry. Then, I added the my onions (and some butter, but you don’t need to add extra) to the fat left in the pan and caramelized them over a medium heat. I put a very small amount of marinara sauce on my dough, topped it generously with pancetta and onions, and then sprinkled on some goat cheese and a little shredded mozzarella. It isn’t exactly like what I had in the restaurant, but it was a great way to top a pizza. The salty cheese melds well with the slightly salty, porky pancetta and the sweet onions, and the tomato sauce adds some extra sweetness and a nice backdrop that brings everything together.

The amounts given below are approximate, as you can add as much or as little of these elements to your pizzas as you wish. They can all be easily doubled, too, if you’re doing a big batch. Feel free to add some red pepper flakes for heat or omit the mozzarella if you want more goat cheese, too.

Goat Cheese, Caramelized Onion and Pancetta Pizza
These amounts are approximate. Use as much or as little as a topping as you like, and experiment by adding sundried tomatoes, artichoke hearts or other elements to your own rendition of the pizza!

Enough dough for two 10-12-inch pizzas (recipe here)
4-6 oz pancetta
1 large onion, thinly sliced (about 1 1/2 cups)
6-8 oz goat cheese, crumbled or coarsely chopped
4-oz shredded mozzarella cheese (about 1 cup)
1/2 cup marinara sauce

Preheat the oven to 500F – with your baking stone on the oven rack, if you have one.
Cut pancetta into small cubes. Fry pancetta in a skillet coated with a little bit of olive oil or vegetable oil over medium-high heat until pancetta is crispy, about 5-10 minutes. Stir occasionally to prevent scorching
Using a slotted spoon, scoop out the crispy pancetta and place on a paper-towel lined plate to drain.
Add onions to the skillet (and 1 tbsp butter, if desired) and cook, stirring frequently, until onions are golden brown and very tender, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat.

Take enough dough for one pizza and place on a lightly floured surface. Flatten the dough into an 8-inch disk, then stretch the edges gently until the dough is 10-12-inches in diameter, rotating the dough by quarter turns as you work. You can also gently stretch the dough by placing it on the backs of your hands, letting the weight of the dough stretch it out.
Transfer pizza dough to a pizza peel or a lightly floured baking sheet before topping (a pizza stone will get you the best results, but this can be baked directly on a baking sheet). Spread about 1/4 cup of marinara sauce very thinly over the crust. Top with half of the pancetta, half of the onions and half of the coarsely crumbled goat cheese. Sprinkle half of the shredded mozzarella over the pizza.
Slide pizza into preheated oven and bake for 8-12 minutes, until crust is golden and cheese has melted.
Serve pizza immediately. Repeat steps with remaining piece of dough.

Makes 2 pizzas; Serves 4-8.

Although club sandwiches are most often associated with delis and diners, they are great sandwiches to make at home. The components are all things that we often have in our kitchens already (you keep bacon on hand, don’t you?). Freshly roasted, sliced turkey is going to make the very best sandwich so the day after Thanksgiving is the perfect day to make one. That said, go for good quality deli meat and you can still make this delicious sandwich any day of the year.

There aren’t any tricks to making this sandwich perfectly as long as you use good quality ingredients and fresh, crispy toast. The only thing you can do to improve on that is to try and get your bacon as flat and crispy as possible, so it fits into the sandwich easily and adds crunchy contrast as well as flavor. Get thicker bacon if you can get it. Starting your bacon in a cold pan will help keep it relatively flat while you cook it, and in just a few minutes you’ll have perfect bacon for your perfect turkey club.

Perfect Turkey Club
This recipe doesn’t give you the proportions for the tomato, turkey or lettuce in your sandwiches, so simply adjust the amounts as you need to. Generally speaking, one of these big sandwiches will be enough for two people to split.

3 slices sandwich bread, toasted, per sandwich
turkey (pref. freshly roasted)
2-3 slices of bacon per layer
large slices of tomato
lettuce
mayonnaise

Place slices of bacon in a cold frying pan. Turn heat up to medium-high and cook until bacon is golden brown on the bottom, then flip and continue to cook until crispy. Drain on a plate or cooling rack lined with paper towels.
Place one slice of toast on your plate. Top with a layer of mayonnaise. Stack turkey, 2-3 slices of bacon, 2 slices of tomato and a bit of lettuce. Place another slice of bread on top and repeat layers. Top with final slice of toast.
Place one toothpick into each quadrant of the sandwich and slice into quarters; the toothpicks will hold the sandwich together while you serve.

When you think of pesto, you probably think of a basil-heavy green sauce made with pine nuts and garlic. This is indeed a pesto, and it is probably the most common type of pesto out there. What you might not know is that these ingredients do not define “pesto.” The name “pesto” means “to crush” and it refers to the fact that nuts, herbs and spices are ground up (often with a mortar and pestle) to make a sauce. You can use all kinds of different ingredients to make a flavorful pesto sauce to top off pasta, pork, chicken or even to simply serve with crostini as a snack.

This particular pesto uses walnuts where other pestos might use pine nuts. Walnuts are a good choice for a pesto because they have a slightly sweet, nutty taste to them ( I find pine nuts often to be on the bitter side) and a really nice buttery flavor that melds well with the olive oil in the pesto. The walnuts are combined with a sharp, dry cheddar

as well as shallots, salt, pepper, vinegar, mustard and olive oil. Don’t use a yellow cheddar for this pesto, as it has the wrong texture and flavor. If you can’t find a good dry, white cheddar, use a harder cheese like Parmesan instead and you’ll still get great results. The pesto is the walnut-colored mixture pictured below, with some basil pesto for contrast.

Walnut Cheddar Pesto

Recipe from Chef Michael Touhy of Grange Restaurant, Sacramento, CA

1 3/4 ups walnuts, toasted and chopped
1 tbsp finely chopped shallots
1 tbsp dijon mustard
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup grated sharp cheddar (or sub. Parmesan)
2 tbsp fresh sage
salt and pepper, to taste

Combine all ingredients except for the olive oil in a large mortar and pestle or the bowl of a food processor. Pulse, or grind, to combine. Slowly add oil while pulverizing the nut mixture until pesto comes together into a thick, smooth paste.
Serve immediately with crostini, on meat or on pasta.
Pesto will keep for at least 2-3 weeks in an airtight container in the fridge