Turkey Fettucine

I apologize for Amy's lack of recipe sharing! She's supposed to be sharing a Coca-Cola cake recipe but she did say something about her Mom taking the cookbook back home....I'd post it myself, but I googled mine and it didn't turn out exactly like Amy's! So I'm sharing something else my family tried last night that was wonderful - good comfort food on a cold, chilly night.

I am going to post this recipe twice in this blog, once to share the original, and then again to show you my version. I'll explain why later....

Turkey Fettucine
1/2 pound fettucine noodles
3 tbsp. butter or margarine
3 tbsp. all purpose flour
1 c. milk
1 c. chicken broth
1/4 c grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp. salt
dash of white pepper
2 c. chopped skinless turkey breast (about 10 oz.)
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley

When I first looked over this recipe, it reminded me of a "flopped" Chicken Carbonara pasta I tried a few weeks back. I don't know about the rest of you, but I like sauce when it comes to pasta - not just to balance the pasta/sauce out but because when you have a recipe that doesn't create a lot of sauce, a few things happen:
You end up with leftover cooked noodles and no sauce
OR
You end up with leftover sauce and no noodles
OR WORSE
You have leftovers of both but the sauce is so miniscule that when you reheat the dish it is DRY to the bone!

I also like a lot of flavor with my pasta, and cheese is always an added bonus! So using that carbonara experience and going from there, I present to you my own modified version of Turkey Fettucine!

Miranda's Turkey Linguine
1 lb linguine noodles
6 tbsp. butter
6 tbsp. all purpose flour
2 cups milk
2 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 c shredded parmesan cheese
3 turkey breast fillets
2 tbsp dried parsley flakes
salt and pepper to taste

I used three of the turkey breast fillets, cooking them 5 minutes per side on medium heat until they were no longer pink in the middle. I think that took about 20 minutes, flipping them every five minutes. Then I had two half-empty boxes of linguine and no fettucine, so we substituted. When it comes to pasta, you can always substitute if you don't have something on hand!
I started the water for the pasta after the turkey fillets were cooked. Then I went to work with my Pampered Chef chopper and diced up the turkey fillets for the sauce.
Then you melt the butter in a saucepan and add the flour, cooking for one minute until it is smooth (to me, it looked like warm, liquid cookie dough). I added the milk and the broth, and then waited for the sauce to thicken. This kind of takes a while, I think it was 15-20 minutes before it reached a consistency I was comfortable with. The pasta was done, so I drained it and added a tbsp. of olive oil and some salt and pepper to the pasta. I turned off the sauce and moved it from the heat, dumping in the 1 1/2 cups of shredded parmesan. I put the pasta in a huge pot and dumped in the turkey, and then the sauce and tossed it to mix.

I made some garlic bread and english peas to serve with it, and Gracie and I had leftovers for lunch today! My only recommendation for reheating is to add 1-2 tbsp. of milk to the bowl in order to keep the sauce from drying out or the pasta getting hard.

I am anticipating cooler temps for the rest of the week (although I'm not weather man!) and so I'm looking for recipes that make good comfort food, soups, stews, etc!

Maybe the next post will be from Amy to share her version of the Coca-Cola cake. Although mine was super-good anyway!