My grandmother’s meat pie | Press

It is one of the oldest known recipes to mankind. Meat inside the pastry dough. Here, the tourtière was created. Over time, she has traveled and transformed a bit. In the Charlevoix and Saguenay – Lac-Saint-Jean regions, a version crystallized. The one my grandmother used to cook and that we still eat every New Year’s Eve.

Valerie Simard
Press

(Saguenay) “It’s an ancestral recipe that my mother’s mother made,” says my aunt Marie-Andrée Simard, who agreed, alongside my mother, to put an end to my culinary incompetence when it comes to meat pies.

After the death of my paternal grandmother, it was my aunt who fueled the New Year’s pie tradition for several years. Of course, over time, the family recipe has evolved a bit, with hunting, trapping and herding becoming less popular activities in the family. “My mother used game meat and that of animals from our farm. She put on the hare, the whole hare, even the head on top that she adored. There were no losses! ”

Pork, beef and chicken have replaced wild meat in most contemporary pies, but not all. Some still include the products of their hunting there. That day, it had been decided to make room for a piece of deer provided by his brother.

If my aunt agreed to reveal the secrets of the family recipe, it is first of all in order to set the record straight. Showing what a “real tourtière” is, such was her mission on that gray November morning when she presented herself with the impostor, because you have to show her so as not to confuse her.

In the north of the Laurentides wildlife reserve, this mixture of ground meat in a crust that is called tourtière in many regions of Quebec is called meat pie. Tourtière designates a dish containing cubed meat, diced potatoes, onions and broth, all enclosed in two rolls of dough and stewed for several hours.

While the basic recipe is well established, it also experiences slight variations from family to family. There are those that incorporate game, those that use concentrated Bovril-type broth, others, Esta hot chicken sauce, those that add wine or marinate the meat overnight. With us, meat and cubed potatoes sit alongside salted herbs, Bovril, chicken broth and brown sauce base (a secret ingredient that helps yellowing potatoes without thickening the rest, reveals my aunt).

“Whether you make it with minced or cubed meat, with beef, pork, veal, moose or hare, the best [tourtière] will always be that of our family, ”emphasizes Francine Laprise, a resident of Jonquière. M^me Laprise is one of several dozen people who shared the secrets of their tourtière with us as part of a call to readers launched earlier this fall, and many responded (see next screen). Her secret: her relatives.

However, we can not ignore the small attentions to bring to it during its preparation. The ingredients are few and the preparation is rather simple, but there are subtleties in the art of the tourtière that are difficult to explain: the ratio of meat and potatoes, the amount of salt and especially the broth, since a pie dish too dry is a failed meat pie.

“How much broth, aunt?”

– It’s all to the eye. You’re going to have to tear out both of my eyes!

– Yes, but…

– We don’t put too much. Otherwise, let it decrease during cooking and add more as needed.

– Some recipes say to put the broth equally …

– No. The broth may spill over and make the dough dirty. “

Clean dough was very important to my grandmother. “She was very proud. The presentation had to be impeccable, ”my aunt explains to me as she rolls up the ribbons of dough, which she will later place on the top of the pie as an ornament.

As the tourtière is still cooked today “by eye” – the quantities must be adjusted according to the size of the container – the transmission of family knowledge often involves gestures and words. This is how the tourtière has been prepared for generations.

The epic of a classic

The oral tradition was also at the origin of the deployment of the tourtière on our continent, which explains its culinary and spelling variations. Born nearly 1600 years before Jesus Christ in Mesopotamia, the tourtière crossed the Atlantic to arrive here by various paths, explains Jean-Pierre Lemasson, retired professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal and author of the book The incredible odyssey of the tourtière.

Very consumed in the Middle Ages, the one that was then called pie, or magpie in English, was known in two forms, specifies the one who taught the history and sociology of gastronomy. “First the aristocratic form, a very prestigious pie that could have 10 or 12 layers, and between the layers, we put all kinds of food. ”

These two classes of pies were thus found here, both under the French and English regimes. In his essay, Jean-Pierre Lemasson retraces the course of the sea pie (sea ​​pie) consumed by English naval officers who came to New England.

The recipe for sea ​​pie is also found in American Cookery, the first cookbook written and published by an American citizen, Amelia Simmons, in 1796.

Tourtière or cipaille?

From New England, the sea ​​pie, which was composed of dough and pork, went up north, as far as the Gaspé, before crossing the river to be adopted by the inhabitants in Charlevoix, who, in turn, will make it migrate to the Saguenay – Lac- Saint-Jean during the colonization of the region, a little before 1850. In the meantime, sea ​​pie becomes six-pasta or cipâte or even cipaille. A linguistic misunderstanding which is at the origin of the layers of pasta which were added to the dish, before disappearing.

“It was an exceptional tourtière, which was originally only made during the holiday season,” says Jean-Pierre Lemasson. At the beginning of the XX^e century, people were sometimes starving in that country. So, when we had a big party pie, it was really a joy. You could say that the tourtière du Lac-Saint-Jean has acquired its reputation through its generosity and its relatively imposing size. Unlike what was the common tourtière, especially in the Montreal region, which was called meat pie. ”

Does this mean that both can claim the name of tourtière? “Absolutely”, he replies unequivocally, since it is the container in which it was cooked that gave its name to the tourtière, and not the bird of the same name. And so ends the debate that has been tearing Quebec apart for decades! Or not.

The recipe revealed

Makes about 12 servings

Ingredients

• 2 lbs (1 kg) pork in the butt, cut into small cubes
• 2 lbs (1 kg) beef (roast king or round), cut into small cubes
• 4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into small cubes *
• 3 large onions, thinly sliced
• Salt and pepper
• Salted herbs
• 2.5 kg (5 lb) potatoes, peeled and cut into small cubes
• 2 large pie crusts
• About 4 cups of homemade (or store-bought) chicken broth
• 4 tbsp. Bovril concentrated beef broth
• 4 tbsp. Bovril Concentrated Chicken Broth
• 4 tbsp. brown sauce base (gravy style)
• Egg yolk

* If desired, replace part of the pork, beef and chicken mixture with game meat (venison, moose, hare, partridge, etc.)

Preperation

• 1. The day before, mix the meat with the onions. Add a little salt and pepper. Let sit in the refrigerator overnight.
• 2. Preheat the oven to 350 ° F (180 ° C).
• 3. Add the potatoes to the meat mixture (about 1/3 of the potatoes for 2/3 of the meat). Adjust the amounts according to your container.
• 4. Line the bottom and sides of a fairly thick casserole dish or roasting pan with a pastry shell.
• 5. Add the mixture of meats and potatoes.
• 6. Add the concentrated beef broth, concentrated chicken broth, gravy base and salted herbs.
• 7. Pour in the chicken broth. Avoid the broth covering the meat.
• 8. Cover with a pastry roll.
• 9. Brush the dough with egg yolk. This will make it more golden. Drill a hole in the center.
• 10. Cover and cook on the lower rack until the dough begins to turn yellow, about an hour.
• 11. Remove the cover. Reduce temperature to 275 ° F (135 ° C) and cook for about 6 hours or until meat and potatoes are cooked. During cooking, through the hole in the center of the pie pan, check regularly with a utensil the amount of broth remaining and add more if necessary.