Saturday 9 December 2006

Tourtière

Tourtière is a traditional French Canadian savoury pie that is served on Christmas Eve. One of my patients gave me a Robin Hood recipe booklet from 1945 that featured a Christmas Eve menu of molded Waldorf salad, oyster casserole, biscuits, sausage rolls, tossed salad, tourtière, and of course, buche de noel (yule log) for dessert.
Tourtière traditionally featured a variety of wild game meat, but now ground pork is used. I use a 50/50 mixture of ground beef and pork.

Pastry for a covered pie

Meat Filling

1-1/2 pounds ground pork (or beef and pork)
1 medium onion, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp sage
1/2 tsp dried mustard
1/8 tsp allspice
1/2 cup potato cooking water
1 large cooked potato, mashed

Brown the meat with the onions, garlic and spices over medium heat. Drain any fat. Add the mashed potato and water and mix together. Put in pastry lined 9 inch pie plate. Cover with pastry and cut slits in top crust.
Bake at 400-425 degrees F for 30 minutes.

This is a rich dish and serves 6-8.

2 comments:

Jaspenelle Jovian said...

Potato cooking water? So do you boil the potato and then reserve the starch water from it?

Anonymous said...

I dice the potato and boil it in a small pot with a little water. You use the water the potato was boiled in. The potato and water hold the meat mixture together to make slicing of the pie easier. You can be flexible with the seasonings...just put in flavours you like!