Remains of the day

Imaginative meals made with leftovers are a reason to give thanks

Karen Branshaw uses an old-fashioned grill pan and a foil-wrapped brick to make hot pressed panini sandwiches. (Dina Rudick / Globe staff)

Some families make turkey with all the trimmings so they can send care packages home with the guests. Others roast a much bigger bird than they need because they want to eat turkey for days.

Turkey leftovers are as much a part of the holiday as the roast bird itself. Cooks who labor over the feast look forward to several days off from the kitchen. If they have mountains of cooked poultry in the fridge, they can slice or cube it, make sandwiches or crisp hot panini, or experiment with soups, stews, and curries.

Christopher Fielding of Carlisle is hoping he has turkey to spare. He enjoys a good turkey sandwich the day after Thanksgiving, and even the day after that. "Starting with breakfast on Friday, " says Fielding, "I eat turkey sandwiches nonstop until the bird is bare."

But for this home builder and avid cook, turkey sandwiches are just the beginning of his adventures reincarnating leftovers. Fielding has become legendary at family gatherings for each year crafting a "turkey beast" out of the bird's carcass and other remnants from the feast. "It's different every year," he says, "but I always make a monster out of the carcass. I might use olives for eyes, carrots for teeth, which are held in place with toothpicks, cranberry sauce for blood, and then I'll put scales down its back with triangles of cheese.

"The rest of my family loves leftovers as much as I do, but they don't feel as compelled to turn them into a twisted art project," he adds.

Other home cooks might not be quite as artistic as Fielding, but many of them venture way beyond the classic and beloved sandwich.

For Karen Barnshaw, the holiday kicks off a week of playful exploration in the kitchen. Barnshaw, from Westford, says she "probably thinks about food way too much," and always savors the chance to invent new dishes.

Two favorite soups are a potato-leek puree made with leftover mashed potatoes and a sweet-potato-carrot bisque. She might serve these with a baguette, brie, and homemade cranberry relish. Recently, Barnshaw started a job as a line cook at Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, where she's been experimenting with panini sandwiches. At both places, she uses an old-fashioned grill pan and a foil-wrapped brick to make the hot pressed specialties, which she does almost daily.

She's waiting until she has enough Thanksgiving turkey to really go to town. One sandwich might contain thinly sliced white meat, a couple of slices of Muenster cheese, and a handful of fresh watercress, with a smoked gouda and roasted red pepper spread, between two slices of top-quality sandwich bread.

Thanksgiving celebrations at her home always include "way too many desserts," she says, so she will often transform a leftover apple pie into a chutney by scooping out the pie filling and then simmering it in a large saucepan with raisins, sauteed shallots, cider vinegar, salt, and pepper. "The only Thanksgiving food I don't mess with after the holiday is stuffing," she says. "My family eats it until it gets dry."

Barnshaw is willing to experiment with many different ingredients, but there's one that she refuses to ever incorporate into her Thanksgiving cooking - even if her kids plead for it. "I won't put marshmallows on anything," she says emphatically.

Often kids are the driving force behind leftover creations. By Friday, weary cooks who are ready to doff their aprons will look for the shortest route to feeding the family. Carlisle mom Debra Hankey, for example, makes a quick-and-easy leftover dish that wins raves every year. It's what she calls a "turkey-and-egg scramble." Hankey begins in a large, nonstick skillet with chopped turkey, chopped boiled onions, mashed potatoes, two eggs per person, a little milk, and either Parmesan or grated cheddar. "I scramble the whole mess," she says. "I know it sounds gross, but it's really good."

Hankey invented her wildly popular frittata-like scramble several years ago after Thanksgiving, when she was frying leftover mashed potatoes for her kids. She decided to take it a step further, making it more of a breakfast dish, and now, she says, "The morning after Thanksgiving would simply not be the same without a turkey-and-egg scramble."