Turkey Cobbler with Parsley Sage Biscuits

There is satisfaction in repurposing leftover to something amazing. Not necessarily more amazing than its first incarnation, but amazing nonetheless. The celebration of abundance naturally comes with plenty of leftovers. Obviously the classic turkey stuffing gravy sandwich is hard to beat. When all else fails, there is always the dependable turkey tetrazzini too. But I wanted something different.

To me, leftover isn’t just the extra food we did not finish from the feast. There is also that odd cup of turkey stock, the few stalks of celery hanging around, the handful of baby carrots that could not fit onto the crudité platter, the last sips of white wine, and bunches of herbs with only a few leaves plucked for the meal. I made this Turkey Cobbler with Parsley Sage Biscuits for the very specific purpose of clearing my fridge.

Once the cobbler came out of the oven, I guarantee you would not even think about the word leftover. The smooth white sauce draped and hugged every chunky bite of turkey and vegetable. The buttery herb biscuits were delicious on their own but absolutely irresistible when soaked with the turkey filling. It was comfort food appropriate for the colder days.

Turkey Cobbler with Parsley Sage Biscuits

serves 6
adapted from Cook's Illustrated Cookbook and Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston's Flour Bakery+Cafe

Ingredients

Filling

• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1/4 cup of diced carrot
• 1 cup of diced celery
• 450g sliced crimini mushrooms, divided
• 2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves, divided
• 1/4 cup dry white wine, divided
• 700g cooked turkey meat, cut to bite-size pieces
• 3/4 cup frozen green peas
• 4 tablespoons of butter
• 1/2 cup of all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cup of whole milk
• 1 1/2 cup of homemade turkey stock or low sodium chicken stock
• salt and pepper

Biscuits

• 350g all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 8 tablespoons or 112g cold unsalted butter, cut to 8 pieces
• 1 cup cold buttermilk
• 1 cold egg
• 2 tablespoon finely chopped parsley
• 2 tablespoon finely chopped sage
• heavy cream

Method

Filling

1. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Sauté onion, carrot, and celery until soft, about 5 minutes. Tip vegetable into large mixing bowl.
2. Depending on the size of your skillet, put about half of the sliced mushrooms into pan. Just make sure not to crowd them too much. Cook them undisturbed for about 3 minutes until one side take on a gorgeous golden colour. Stir them around and add thyme leaves. Deglaze pan with half of the white wine and cook until liquid evaporates. Tip cooked mushrooms into mixing bowl with vegetable and repeat for remaining mushrooms.
3. Add turkey meat and frozen peas to mixing bowl as well.
4. Melt butter in skillet over medium heat. Add 1/2 cup of flour and keep stirring for about a minute until golden. Drizzle milk and stock into pan and whisk to a thick smooth sauce, about a minute. If your sauce is lumpy, no worries. Just pour into a large measuring cup (you’ll have about 3 cups of sauce) and blitz for a minute with immersion blender until smooth.
5. Season sauce with salt and pepper. I used no salt homemade turkey stock and needed about 1 teaspoon of fine sea salt for it to taste right.
6. Stir sauce into mixing bowl until filling is evenly coated. At this point, you may store the filling in fridge to be used the next day if you don’t want to cook your cobbler immediately.

Biscuits

1. Add flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into bowl of food processor. Mix for about 30 seconds.
2. Scatter cold butter pieces over flour. Pulse for about 5 or 6 times until butter is about size of a large pea.
3. Empty flour mixture into a large mixing bowl. In a small bowl, whisk together buttermilk, egg, parsley, and sage. Using a large spatula, gently stir wet ingredients into dry just until no dry flour remains. Do not over mix.
4. If you want to bake your cobbler later, you can use a 2 tablespoons cookie scoop to divide the dough into golf ball size globs. I got about 21 globs out of mine. Freeze the dough to be used later.

Assembly

1. Preheat oven to 350F. To make one big cobbler, fill a 9x13 baking dish with the turkey filling. I wanted smaller portions so I filled two 6-inch square baking dishes and two 4-inch soup bowls with filling.
2. If your  biscuits are frozen, you can use the globs of dough directly from the freezer. Alternatively, drop golf-ball size dough on top of the filling, leaving room between the globs.
3. Brush heavy cream over the biscuit dough.
4. Bake for 30-40 minutes for smaller cobbler or 50 minutes for large cobbler. The filling should be bubbly and biscuits golden. Serve immediately.