Leftover turkey is like the boy you used to love.  Once hot and steamy , it gives way to cold storage, inducing  a slight nausea born of having overindulged the day before.  How fleeting is our love for the big bird. Yet,  from this, Salon wants us to make something shiny and new. 

Fine.  Inspired by bonus points for using Champagne, we hit our first snag.  You cannot open a bottle of Champagne  and hope to have any left for cooking.  Unless, and herein lies the genius, you open a second bottle:  a most excellent solution, but only after sleeping on the matter.

With a modicum of self-restraint and a hard-working Vacu-Vin ,  we woke the next day ready to make a little leftover magic.   Here’s what we had to work with:  homemade chevre (for our demanding freshman home from college),   turkey (natch), citrusy cranberry sauce, sage leaves, reserve stores of butter (you never know when the apocalypse might descend), and some tangerines.  The mashed potatoes were gone.  The stuffing seemed, well, fully realized and duly appreciated.  The yams…please.  No more! 

What do you do with extra family hands, sweat shop workers as it were, with nothing better to do than play charades or bicker?  You drag their attitudinal butts into a FFA (Forced Family Activity).  Hey, boys and girls, we’re going to make pasta!   Specifically, we’re going to make ravioli.  Slap some chevre, finely chopped turkey, and a tiny dollop of cranberry onto a delicate pasta round, cover and pinch.  Voila!  It’s Thanksgiving in a bite, with pasta standing in for the potato. 

For the sauce, we sautéed a shallot in butter (because it’s Thanksgiving, get over it), added ribboned sage, let the combination send up its divine scent and, wait for it (you can feel the bonus points coming) poured in a good lot of champagne.  We added a squeeze from our tangerines and reduced.   Then, like the fearless, heart-naive warriors we are, we mounted up the sauce with butter and a splash of cream.  

As we prepared to taste our invention, it was agreed that the theory  of these tastes together made sense.  Some among us, one in particular who shall remain nameless, feared that boiling  Thanksgiving Dinner in pasta would produce an unforeseen alchemic disaster.   The result, however, was heaven.  Seriously, it was damn tasty.  We’ll do this again next year.  Thanks, Salon.  And apologies to the boy I used to love.