Yemi Adelekan is a food writer and blogger who was a semi-finalist in the 2022 series of BBC TV’s Masterchef competition.

Yemi writes for the Stray Ferret about her love of the area’s food and shares cooking tips. 

Sometimes, the best part of Christmas dinner isn’t the day itself, but what comes after. It’s the quiet creativity of turning leftovers into something entirely new and flavour-packed using a few clever shortcuts and familiar ingredients.

One year, I made a turkey and ham pie with fresh cream and tarragon, encased in golden puff pastry. It was decadent, indulgent and unapologetically luxurious. I can say, hand on heart, that my entire family enjoyed it more than the Christmas Day meal itself.

The pie topped with shop-bought pastry, felt both nostalgic and indulgent and was a gentle nod to the spirit of Nigerian meat pies, where savoury fillings are wrapped and baked into something deeply satisfying.

One of the challenges of the festive season is the overfilled fridge that’s packed with good intentions and uneaten food leaving many people unsure of where to begin.

Interestingly, this is the time when most kitchens are rich with possibilities: fresh herbs, cream, butter, cheeses, pasta, charcuterie and the odd bottle of wine are readily available. Leaning into those ingredients allows leftovers to be reimagined into exciting dishes that don’t just use up what’s there, but genuinely feel worth sitting down for.

That shift in thinking - from what it was to what it could become - is where the joy lies.

Filo pastry is a brilliant place to start. Light, crisp and endlessly versatile, it gives leftovers a completely new identity. Turkey and ham can be folded into filo wraps with a little mayonnaise and cranberry sauce, then fried until golden and shatteringly crisp. 

Equally irresistible are filo parcels filled with cheese and cranberry sauce, fried until molten in the middle and finished with a drizzle of hot honey - sweet, salty, sharp and sticky in all the right ways.

For heartier dishes, leftovers lend themselves beautifully to comfort cooking perfect for casseroles with beans and sausages. Leftover meats also shine in pasta dishes, folded through a rich mac and cheese or stirred into a simple cream sauce with herbs and sun dried tomatoes, transforming midweek staples into something celebratory.

Vegetables deserve just as much re-imagination. Roast parsnips, often forgotten once the main event is over, transform effortlessly into a curried parsnip soup. Onions, garlic and ginger as base notes, warm spices add depth, a little scotch bonnet or habanero brings a gentle kick, and a squeeze of lemon juice at the end lifts the sweetness and brings everything back into balance. It’s comforting, bold and entirely removed from its origins on the Christmas plate.

Reimagining shouldn’t stop at savoury. Post-Christmas cooking is also the perfect moment to lean into desserts that feel familiar yet special. Bread and butter pudding is an obvious choice when bread, butter, cream, nuts and dried fruit are already available. Toasted nuts add texture, cranberries bring sharpness, and suddenly a humble pudding feels festive all over again.

For something more refined, a crème brûlée is hard to beat. A memorable dessert I had a few years back was a thyme-infused crème brûlée at Quaglino’s London - fragrant, elegant and quietly surprising beneath its crisp caramel top. It’s a beautiful way to finish a meal of reworked festive dishes and a reminder that simple ingredients, treated thoughtfully, can feel truly luxurious.

At its heart, reimagining Christmas leftovers is about confidence and intention. It’s about zero waste, maximum flavour and letting go of the idea that leftovers are something to endure or freeze away with vague promises of “I’ll use them later”. 

This Christmas, I’m inviting you to transform what you have so completely that you don’t remember how it started. To open the fridge and see opportunity rather than pressure. 

Because the most memorable meals aren’t always the ones planned weeks in advance. Sometimes, they’re the ones that come in the moment - reimagined, reinvented and full of joy. 

Merry Christmas and wishing you all a happy New Year.