There is a specific kind of Tuesday — the first one after Christmas — when you open the fridge and the turkey is still in there. Not the turkey you had at two o’clock on the day, with the gravy and the sprouts and the whole family quietly arguing over which bit you’d been saving. The other turkey. The one that’s been sitting on the top shelf in a Tupperware container, like a guest who’s decided the party is over but the wine isn’t. It’s still there. It’s doing fine. It’s, frankly, doing better than most of the people who ate it.
The turkey has been the centrepiece of the British Christmas dinner since the seventeenth century, though it took the Victorians to really get the message across — for a good while the working classes stuck with the goose, which was cheaper and more in keeping with the “it’s going to be a long winter” mood. By the 1950s the bird had properly taken over. Bernard Matthews started his empire in 1950 out of his own home with his wife, twenty turkey eggs and an incubator. By 1960 he was in the Guinness Book as the biggest turkey farmer in Europe. Today he farms some seven million of the things a year across Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire, and his 1980 “Bootiful” ads — the thick Norfolk accent and all — are still lodged somewhere in the national brainstem.
Which brings us to the sandwich. Because the turkey doesn’t stop at Christmas dinner. It has a second act. It shows up at Boxing Day, then at lunch on the first working day of the year, then at the sandwich that is, for most of the country, the unofficial national dish of the week after. It’s the turkey that keeps coming back — the one guest who refuses to leave, who puts the kettle on, who takes a slice of the last cake. This recipe takes it seriously for once.
Ingredients
- 4 thick slices turkey breast (supermarket sliced turkey, or the leftover breast sliced against the grain)
- 3 tbsp cranberry sauce (jarred, the kind in the Christmas aisle)
- 1 tbsp orange marmalade
- 1 tbsp brandy (or a splash of orange juice, if that’s the sort of thing you keep)
- 3 tbsp mayonnaise
- 1 tsp wholegrain mustard
- 1 tsp prepared horseradish
- 1 small red onion, sliced thin (for the quick pickle)
- 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
- 1 tsp sugar
- 4 thick slices of bread (sourdough, or a proper roll, halved)
- 4 leaves of lettuce, or a handful of rocket
- A smear of bread sauce, or a spoon of the leftover gravy (optional, but recommended)
- Butter, for toasting
Method
- Warm the cranberry sauce, marmalade and brandy in a small pan over a low heat for two or three minutes, until it’s loose and glossy. You want the consistency of a good marmalade, not a jam that’s given up. This is the bit that elevates the thing from “leftover” to “intentional” — the turkey’s second act, in a pan.
- Mix the mayonnaise, wholegrain mustard and horseradish in a bowl. It should taste like a decision. If it’s too hot, add another spoon of mayo — but don’t water it down into a mayonnaise that’s given up on the turkey.
- Slice the red onion paper-thin, put it in a bowl with the vinegar and sugar, and leave it for twenty minutes. It’ll go from “onion” to “onion that’s had a proper think”. This is the turkey’s second act, in miniature — the onion, like the bird, is being given a second lease of life and it’s taking advantage of it.
- Toast the bread properly. You want it just short of burning, the way you’d want the turkey itself — done, but not past it. Butter it while it’s still warm, before the turkey gets the chance to complain about the cold.
- Now the assembly, and this is where the turkey gets its second lease of life. A smear of the horseradish mayo on one half. The bread sauce or gravy on the other. The turkey, folded — not stacked. Stacked turkey is a turkey that’s being rushed, and the turkey has been through enough this week.
- Lay the cranberry-orange spread over the turkey. Then the pickled onion — squeeze out a little of the vinegar first, like a man being asked to make a phone call. A leaf of lettuce, or the rocket, if you’re feeling like a person with opinions.
- Close it and cut it on the diagonal. A turkey sandwich that isn’t cut on the diagonal isn’t a turkey sandwich — it’s a sandwich that’s lying to you. Eat it while the turkey is still doing its best impression of a Christmas, because by Wednesday it’ll be in the soup, and by the end of the week it’ll be in the bin, and nobody will remember it kindly.
Veggie variant: swap the turkey for a thick slice of plant-based turkey breast (the supermarket’s chilled aisle does a serviceable one) or a grilled portobello, sliced thick. Everything else is unchanged — the cranberry-orange spread, the horseradish mayo and the pickle all work.
The turkey, for the record, does not stay forever. It goes through the sandwich, then the soup, then the pie, and finally, around the third or fourth week, the bin. But the sandwich is the one that gets you through the middle — the one that turns the week after Christmas from a series of sad lunches into something you’d actually ask for again. The turkey keeps coming back. It always does.
