Turkey Pastilla

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🎄USING YOUR CHRISTMAS TURKEY LEFTOVERS
Pastilla, pronounced 'bast-eeya', is a Moroccan dish which is very much like a pie with an interesting filling of sweetly spiced meat, almond, eggs and herbs encased in crispy filo pastry and dusted with icing sugar. Sounds weird? Actually it is rather good and would make an ideal Boxing Day meal using leftover Christmas turkey.

The combination of fragrant spices including cinnamon and sugar is surprisingly agreeable and don't be put off by the scrambled egg either as it turns out less eggy than you'd expect. The texture is soft and moist and carries the flavours really well.

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Turkey Cacciatore

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🎄USING YOUR CHRISTMAS TURKEY LEFTOVERS
This is our version of an Italian dish and although not entirely authentic, it is ideal to use up leftover turkey.
‘Cacciatore’ means ‘hunter’ and this recipe is hearty, rustic and full of rich flavours with our added spike of chilli heat.
For an extra twist we topped with Mozzarella for a lovely gooey layer.
It is good served with some pasta on the side or a hunk of country bread to mop up the juices.

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Turkey Farmer’s Pie

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🎄USING YOUR CHRISTMAS TURKEY LEFTOVERS
Shepherds have got one so why not turkey farmers? When we came up with our recipe we were going to call it a turkey herder’s pie but that sounded somewhat euphemistic (stop giggling!)
It is inspired by the shepherd’s version and is equally as comforting. It is also the perfect opportunity to use up some dark meat which often gets left as everyone ends up having a preference for breast meat on Christmas day.

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Turkey ‘Vatapa’

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🎄USING YOUR CHRISTMAS TURKEY LEFTOVERS
This recipe idea is based on the fiery Brazilian stew know as Vatapa and is very straightforward to make as Capsicana has done most of the work for you.
It’s full of flavour with a good kick of chilli to perk up your taste buds.
If you need to feed more, for example four people, you’ll need another pack of Capsicana Cook Sauce and double up the other ingredients.

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Coronation Turkey

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🎄USING YOUR CHRISTMAS TURKEY LEFTOVERS
This is our version of a chicken dish which was originally created to celebrate the coronation of our current monarch, Queen Elizabeth II in 1953.

Love it or loathe, since then, it has become a popular sandwich filling which sometimes can be a little sloppy and bland.

Ours has a bit more oomph with the help of some quality curry powder
and is nice and chunky in texture. It is also a great way to perk up leftover Christmas turkey.

You could serve it, traditionally, with rice but we like it wrapped up in a chapatti with some baby gem lettuce leaves. Slightly messy but very delicious!

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Chicken, Fennel & Apple Pasta Salad

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Chicken goes so well with creamy textures and the aniseed flavour of tarragon and fennel.
Our salad uses tarragon mayonnaise to create an unctuous herbal sauce which combines with pieces of crunchy tangy apple.

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Turkey Steaks with Lemon & Mint Avocado

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Really, the star of the show in this dish is the avocado which is enhanced with a splash of lemon.
The flavours are fresh and bright and the meal is light, but also satisfying, as well as as being quick and easy to prepare.

You don't have to have it with turkey either. The avocado would go equally well with other meats; a beef steak or lamb, perhaps or even tuna.
It would even be perfect smeared on toast for lunch.

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Pesto, Chicken & Vegetable Tray Bake

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By all means have pesto on pasta but do try it with other foods too. It is great on fish and has some simple chicken thighs and vegetables singing in the oven.

Make an all-in-one tray roast with sliced leeks, carrots some skin-on potatoes, a few tomatoes and skinless chicken thighs and spooned over some pesto Pesto 20 minutes before the end of cooking time. Delicious!

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Take a look at our '20 Ways with Pesto' for some more ideas.

Chicken with Saffron & Green Olives

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This dish explores the flavours of Andalusia, a sun-baked southern region of Spain.
Saffron brings a subtle honeyed fragrance to the fruity olives and zesty orange making a wonderful sauce for succulent chicken.

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Spiced Mackerel with Fennel Slaw

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We are certainly enjoying the abundance of fresh mackerel at the moment –
it is reasonably priced and readily available.
Our second mackerel recipe includes some interesting flavours for a light and healthy meal which is good any day of the week.

Fennel is one of our favourite vegetables with its fresh aniseed flavour and,
in our opinion, so much nicer than cabbage in a slaw.
Although we have little success in growing bulb fennel, we have no trouble
with herb fennel. As well as the leaves, the flowers are very edible and release an intense burst of aniseed flavour in the mouth – something to try, if you haven’t already.

If you want to make a more substantial meal, simply serve with some boiled new potatoes or some buttered crusty bread.

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Grilled Mackerel with Pepper Salad

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Mackerel is at its seasonal best and widely available at the moment, so make the most of it.
A rich oily fish packed with omega-3 goodness it is perfect cooked on the grill until its beautiful shiny skin turns crisp.
Lightly seasoned with a smoked paprika oil, we’ve paired the mackerel with a tangy and fruity pepper salad to bring a taste of the Mediterranean to the table.

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Super Beetroot Veggie Burgers

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If you’re growing your own veg, you’re probably experiencing a glut right now and we think we have just the recipe to use up some of that bountiful produce. If you’re not green-fingered it is perfectly acceptable to buy things in.

For vegetarians and observers of ‘Meat-Free Monday’, these burgers are delicious and satisfying plus they look good too with their purply-pink hue.
And why do we call them ‘super’? Well, they’re decently packed with healthy ingredients, so they have to be good for you.

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Moroccan Style Meatballs

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These spicy meatballs are delicious and really simple to make. To get the best results you do need to get in there with you hands when you mix all the meatball ingredients together. You will end up with yellow fingers because of the turmeric in the Ras El Hanout but it's worth it!
The addition of semolina rather than breadcrumbs helps to bind everything together as well as adding a slight nuttiness.

Unlike most meatballs in sauce recipes there is no need to fry them first. They are just dropped straight into the sauce and simmered slowly – this releases their flavour into the sauce and everything becomes wonderfully infused, rich and delicious.

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Peruvian-Style Grilled Chicken

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The new Cook Sauces from Capsicana are extremely versatile and can be used in a variety of ways.

Visitors to the Speciality & Fine Food Fair 2015 will be able to try this sauce and others, where Capsicana will be exhibiting on stand V123

The packs each carry a couple of recipes, one very simple, ideal for a quick midweek meal and the other a little more involved for maybe a Friday night or weekend.

In The Artisan Food Trail kitchen we often like to experiment, so we took Capsicana’s Chilli & Lemon Peruvian Cook Sauce, added a few extras and turned it into an extra special marinade for chicken.
The Cook Sauce can also be used as a condiment which we included in a simple dip to go with the chicken.

The trick to getting the maximum amount of flavour to permeate the meat is to get the marinade under the chicken skin as well as on the surface.
Nothing beats barbecuing for a smokey flavour but a hot oven will cook the chicken just fine, still producing a crispy, caramelised, burnished skin.

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Chicken & Spinach Curry

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This is a mildly spiced Indian curry – don't be fooled by the amount of chilli powder used here as it is the Kashmiri variety. Kashmiri chilli is a lot milder than regular chilli powder with a gentle warmth and sweet earthy notes.
If you don't have any you could use paprika instead with a dash of
cayenne pepper.

As we said, this curry is not hot but rather more aromatic with a degree of warmth coming from the garam masala (we used the Spice Kitchen blend). The generous amount of spinach used creates a silky texture with rich flavour.
Serve simply either with basmati rice or chapattis or naan breads.

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Venison & Pork Chorizo with fennel and potatoes

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A nice simple recipe using Great Glen Charcuterie's Venison & Pork Chorizo which would make an ideal midweek meal.
The chorizo is wonderfully meaty, smokey and savoury with a good amount of spicing (though not hot) that mixes with the aniseed-tasting fennel and juicy tomatoes for a delicious meal.

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Beef Ragu

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The flavours of a slow-cooked ragu are soft and mellow, quite different from a typical quick bolognese sauce. It is important to use good quality beef mince which has plenty of fat as this all adds to the flavour and the smoothness of the sauce.
The slow cooking creates a melt in the mouth texture as the meat becomes very soft and very delicious.
The ragu is best served stirred through tagliatelle pasta.

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Braised Pork with Prunes and a Potato Top

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Choose good quality British pork for this dish and with several great producers on The Artisan Food Trail to choose from, you can’t go wrong.

It doesn't need to be an expensive cut either and we used shoulder as this seems to work best. The slow cooking makes the meat very tender and almost melting in texture.

Inspired by all things English, this recipe uses old traditional flavours that complement each other so well. Cider and apples for sharpness, prunes for sweetness and a dash of mace, thyme and juniper for warmth and fragrance.

Although optional, we can highly recommend adding Alan Coxon’s Ale-Gar
to give a nice depth to the finished flavour. To us, it just seemed very appropriate to add it as the rest of the ingredients echo the time which inspired the Ale-Gar’s recipe.

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Pumpkin Risotto

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What do you do with your Halloween pumpkin once the candle’s gone out? Stop! Don’t throw it away! You could actually eat it by making a delicious meal rather than just binning the once scary, but now sad squash.

Not that we want to come over all ‘preachy’, but think of the time and effort the farmer put into growing it. If your pumpkin really is inedible then make sure it goes into the compost.

This recipe can be made with a number of different types of squash – butternut squash is ideal – so once the frightening festivities are over, it makes a meal suitable for any time.

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Wild Venison Chorizo and Butter Bean Stew

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Hearty and healthy, this stew of wild venison chorizo, butter beans and vegetables is a simple and tasty meal, made all in one pot. Just serve with some good crusty bread to soak up all the juices.

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