Turkey and Leek Pie

I came up with this pie to use up leftover turkey at Christmas. I had big juicy fat leeks in my garden all over the hard winter and I made a sauce from what I had in the fridge. It worked. In fact, it worked very well indeed! It is a great way of using up leftovers (if you are using leftovers, simply tear the turkey into strips or cut into bite-sized pieces and add to the pie), but I now buy turkey fillets in the supermarket specifically to make this. Turkey is such a lean meat (the leanest of all) and I use it a lot to make healthy dinners.

Ingredients

1 fresh turkey fillet, roughly 750g

2–3 rashers of smoked streaky bacon

Knob of butter

3 trimmed and washed leeks

2 cloves of garlic

Sea salt and black pepper to season

Juice of half a lemon

200g cream cheese

150ml milk

2 tablespoons wholegrain mustard

Half a nutmeg

One batch of flaky pastry

1 medium egg

Method

• Preheat the oven to 190ºC. Cut the turkey into bite-sized cubes and set aside.

• Cut up the bacon and add to a saucepan with the melted butter. Fry off for a few minutes until coloured and crispy.

• Slice the leeks, peel and finely chop the garlic and add them to the bacon in the saucepan. Sweat these for about 10 minutes over a medium heat, stirring occasionally to prevent them from sticking.

• Season the turkey pieces with salt and pepper and add them to the saucepan, brown them and then squeeze in the juice of half a lemon. Season everything with a little salt and pepper.

• Stir in the cream cheese and milk, bring to the brink of a boil, add the mustard, grate the nutmeg over and give another good stir to mix the flavours.

• Reduce the heat to a simmer. Let this mixture simmer for 5–10 minutes to thicken the sauce (add more milk if the sauce is getting too thick), check the taste and season if required. Take off the heat and pour into a suitable-sized oven dish.

• Roll out the pastry slightly bigger than the size of the oven dish. Lay it over the top and tuck the sides in. If a side is too big just cut it off. Stab the pastry a few times with a knife to let the steam out. Whisk up an egg and brush it over the pastry.

• Bake in the oven for 25–30 minutes until the pastry is golden. Serve with a green salad.