(11/30/20) You heard me.
I don’t know if I am the original inventor of this annual treat or just another in a long line of leftover fans who’ve stumbled upon it, but either way it’s delicious.
My wife and I made it again last night, and I would’ve taken a picture if my camera battery hadn’t been dead. What you really need though is the “recipe,” so here it is:
Ingredients
Fresh or leftover, cooked, long grain white rice (we typically use Basmati)
Cubed leftover Thanksgiving turkey (we got a delicious moist roasted and glazed breast from the Honey Baked store this year)
1 medium carrot, diced
½ medium onion, diced
1 decent-sized celery stalk, you guessed it—diced!
2 good well-mounded serving spoons of leftover traditional cornbread dressing. This should already have the preceding vegetables in it, as well as maybe another type of bread (in our case, cubed and dried baguette), but you need more.
Cranberry sauce to taste (we use at least two heaping spoonful’s)
Stir Fry sauce to taste
Soy sauce to taste
1 egg, beaten
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
Fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped
Sesame seeds
Red pepper flake (optional)
Procedure
Heat a few tablespoons of vegetable oil on HIGH in a large wok (enough to easily cover the bottom) and stir in the beaten egg. In no more than 15 seconds or so it should turn into a yellow cloud. Fish this out immediately with a spider and place it on a paper plate lined with kitchen paper. Have your beautiful assistant dice this cooked egg crosswise with a butter knife and set it aside.
Now assess your oil. You don’t want too much in there but, because of the dressing, you’ll be needing more than if you were making a traditional fried rice. You want enough to maybe just barely cover your next ingredients: the onions, carrots, and celery. Toss these in and stir fry with a wooden spoon or paddle until the onions become translucent (no more than a couple minutes in the sizzling oil).
Next, add your dressing. Keep this moving at all times to avoid burning. As I said, this is going to soak up most of that oil, but the goal here is to get a little bit of crispy fry on those bread cubes—really wake them up, give the ole mash some texture.
Everything proceeds quickly from here, where you are to add your turkey and cranberry sauce at the same time, tossing only enough to reheat. Watch that bottom! Don’t let anything stick!
Then add the rice, all at once, topping it with the stir fry sauce (we use a couple tablespoons or so), soy sauce (a few good dashes), butter, a sprinkling of sesame seeds, and the red pepper flake (if, like me, you like the heat).
Get this all moving like a Taiwanese chef, ensuring everything is well distributed and has its turn on that hot bottom.
When heated throughout, keep stirring as your assistant tosses in the egg and chopped parsley. You’re now done!
The finished product should look pretty fancy thanks to the pretty cranberries, fluffy egg bits, and chopped parsley. And it should taste pretty much like Thanksgiving in a bowl if you monitored your sauce carefully. You don’t want it to taste like takeout; the soy sauce and thicker stir fry sauce are supposed to be back notes.
When you have this mastered you can move on to another favorite of mine: BBQ Fried Rice! hehe
For that you should use diced BBQ pork from the rib that was slow cooked in any good Mid-southern sticky-sweet sauce, and substitute that same BBQ sauce for the stir fry sauce (though you still use the soy). Another sub is chopped cilantro for the parsley; that, and while there won’t be any dressing, obviously, you might still have some plain cornbread lying around. And if there were some old smoked bacon-wrapped jalapenos too, you could even chop them up and toss ‘em in there. You’re only limited by your imagination.
***
In other news, I am very happy to announce that my book is now available in Levy County, Florida! My hardcover can be checked out from both the Bronson Public Library and the Luther Callaway Public Library in Chiefland.
Thank you very much to the librarians of these fine institutions for your support of this local author!
And that’s not all; if WorldCat is any indication, my hardcover is coming soon to Illinois. Keep an eye out up in historic Woodstock where my book is apparently being added to their public library this December! This is amazing to me because, with everything going on this year, I had had to all but suspend my #awitchineverystate campaign.
Thank you very much to all the librarians out there helping me expand my readership!
P.S. ANNOUNCEMENT: I’ve tried everything in my power, including contacting my publisher, but have yet to resolve a niggling issue that has plagued me for over a year now. About a month or two after my book was released Amazon and a few other places insisted on adding a “(1)” behind the title of my hardcover. They don’t do this to the eBook, just the hardcover, and Amazon isn’t the only one doing this. Some of them have even expanded upon it, to what that “one” implies, mis-titling my book “A Witch’s Burden, Volume 1.” Stand alones aren’t supposed to have these ones, only series.
This is super annoying. Please, if you have been, do not be misled by this false label. A Witch’s Burden is a self-contained novel. There will be no sequel, and it is not the beginning of some series. If, by some chance, this has put you off buying it—fearing that it will later be offered for free in some promotion for “book two”—then you needn’t worry. As I’ve mentioned before, I am working on another project, but one that couldn’t be more different: a lighter toned character-based fantasy adventure, if I can ever finish it!
Anyway… That’s enough out of me.
If the Spirit moves you, please join me in praying for a better end to what has been a very challenging year.
D.W.