Turkey is one of the meats that I have seen cooked in Mexican mole sauce, that amazingly complex blend of chilies, seeds, nuts, dried fruit, herbs, spices, and sometimes chocolate. However, making mole can be a complicated and harrowing process if you don't pick the right recipe. When I made mole negro (from Zaslavsky's Cooks Tour of Mexico) last year it was quite a challenge (but sublime in the end), but I have seen other recipes that look pretty easy (toss some stuff in a blender, puree it, then cook it in a saucepan). I think that Rick Bayless's books have some relatively simple versions. It also comes in jars, and if you live near a large Latino community, the markets might have fresh mole paste for sale (I have read about places in East L.A. that have numerous mounds of different varieties).

My whole family lives in a little town called "Paradise" in Northern California. At Christmas I travel down from where I live in Vancouver, WA to Paradise. We usually have turkey and tri-tip roast for Christmas dinner. There is never any tri-tip left, but with the turkey leftovers I always make turkey enchiladas for the family usually a couple days after Christmas. You can just find your favorite enchilada recipe (sorry, mine is in my head) and use turkey meat instead of chicken or the other meat you may use. I also make my homemade Mexican rice, beans and guacamole to accompany the enchiladas. And we wonder why we put on a few pounds at Christmas. ;o)

We made polenta panini with turkey, cranberry, Manchego cheese, and gravy poured over the top. The moist polenta counteracts the dryness of the turkey and the Manchego is a nice complement to the cranberry.

I cooked the leftover turkey the Malaysian way; the creation is quite "exotic." If anyone is interested, here is the link: http://www.rasamalaysia.com/2006/11/leftover-turkey-malaysian-style.html

What a handy round up...especially the turkey cornbread sandwich!

I am looking for a recipe using turkey in a shepherds pie. Anybody have that recipe to share?

So far we've had turkey sandwiches, turkey quesadillas with a southwestern veggie soup, and turkey crostini. The leftover soup and turkey from making quesadillas were combined and frozen for a SW turkey & veggie soup next week (served with either cheese quesadillas or warmed tortillas). Still have 4 cups of rough chopped turkey meat in the freezer.

I'm cooking another turkey tomorrow (the Thanksgiving one was sooo good that hubby wanted another), and so will need to come up with more ideas. Hubby doesn't like tetrazzini or shepherd's pie, but I am considering chili, burritos, hash, and a phyllo-filled something or other.

I've poured over your turkey recipes, but I've noticed something that you haven't seem to have made yet from turkey leftovers - turkey pasties. (PASS-tees, not PACE-tees =D)

Unfortunately, my Mammy's pastie dough recipe is a family secret, but I'm sure you could find a reasonably decent recipe for Cornish pastie dough online somewhere. ;)

Too often I've found turkey pastie recipes online that were just someone's idea of a way to unload ALL their Thanksgiving leftovers. I'm a pastie purist - tiny cubes of your meat of choice, potatoes, and, maybe, onions - all diced no more than a 1/2" cubed and cooked before being baked into the crust. After baking, and if they're not being saved to put in lunches or some such, you get out a plate while it's still steaming hot, peel back the top layer of the crust and ladle on some heavily-peppered turkey gravy. (My brother and I also love beef-potato-onion pasties with peppered beef gravy and ketchup. =D)

I'd love to see your take on turkey pasties!

Chrissi, Cyber School Mom