Sadly one of the things you won't hear the late Bernard Matthews saying is his trademark "bootiful", on account of him being the late Bernard Matthews. Whilst the passing of the great man is something we all noted with sorrow, his titular company, Bernard Matthews Farms, is still going strong and has embarked on a campaign that shouldn't be described as "a turkey is for life, not just for Christmas" since it does involve eating the bird but the sentiment is pretty much spot on. I happily scoff pigs in blankets all year round and have never been afraid to pick up turkey instead of chicken whatever the time of year but there does seem to be such a mind set on only eating turkey at Christmas that Bernard Matthews Farms have drafted in the eccentric but rather awesome Marco Pierre White to help people turn on to the idea of using turkey in cooking for 364 other days of the year.
As well as the fact that turkey is often a cheaper alternative to other meats, which in this time of economic peril is always handy with a family to feed, it's also a pretty tasty and healthy meat too. True, when I scoff pan fried turkey thighs in a parma ham and blue cheese sauce, I'm probably not extending my life by much, but in comparison to using other meats, in more sensible cooking, turkey fares pretty well. If you take a look at Change Your meat not Your Menu, you can see the incredible difference that doing something as simple as putting turkey in your spag bol rather than minced beef in terms of the saturated fat you consume makes. With two small kids in the house, we try to have a varied diet but we are also conscious of the amount of fat and red meat that they eat. We eat a lot of poultry and oily fish, and with chicken now often costing as much as steak, we're increasingly using turkey when it comes to cooking at home.
Mr Pierre White has come up with a few recipes of his own you can use, should inspiration abandon you. From reading through them, they're of a level that a kitchen novice like myself can manage too. I guess his input is in the creative side, ensuring that the ingredients complement each other and give an overall pleasing taste. This would be in complete contrast to a friend of mine who once substituted Weetabix for oatmeal in a recipe and didn't tell any of us. I wandered around with what felt like half a ton of concrete in my stomach for days after that.
Variety is the spice of life and next time you think about bunging some chicken nuggets in the oven, try something a bit different instead. Cooking your own food isn't exactly onerous, even posh people find the time to do it (and you don't get much posher than Nigella Lawson, she seems to never be out of a kitchen) and there's really nothing very daunting about it. In the time it takes to warm those saturated fat filled nuggets, you could have made stir fried turkey with ginger and let me tell you, if I'm coming round for dinner, I'd know which of the two I'd prefer!
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