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Tourtière - French-Canadian meat pie - is one of those things that ought to be declared a national treasure. I was familiar with other types of meat pies before I moved to Quebec but tourtière is different. There are no vegetables or gravies in this pie. Just meat, maybe some potatoes and a few spices in a pie shell. And it is delicious.
I remember eating two spectacular tourtières when I lived in Montreal. One was at a professor's house. I was taking a seminar in Canadian History and our professor invited the whole class over to his house for dinner and drinks. He and his wife provided a wonderful meal but the only thing I remember from it was the tourtière. It was the best I'd ever eaten and I really wish I had asked for the recipe (though looking back I realize it is quite possible they hate it catered). The other was my ex-boyfriend's mother's homemade tourtière. He was from rural Quebec (though he and his family were anglophones) and his mother used to make him goodies, freeze them and ship them by bus. The bottom of the bus was cold enough that everything stayed frozen (assuming we didn't hesitate in getting to the bus to pick them up and trust me we never did). That really is one tourtière recipe I wish I had because there was nothing like coming home from a long day of classes and studying and popping one of her tourtières in the oven. (And really, her cooking was the best thing about that relationship.)
While tourtière is sold year round in grocery stores, French-Canadians traditionally have it around the holidays. I don't live in Quebec anymore but I could drive there in about 10 minutes so it still influences my eating patterns sometimes. I had great plans for tourtière this year. You see, St. Phyllis of the Butter Tarts makes tourtières but she only sells them at a couple of events none of which are our weekly farmer's market. We knew we'd be out of town for one of the events so we decided to hit up the first event in November. A brilliant plan really, except for the part where we forgot to look at the schedule for the event and showed up 15 minutes after it ended. We went on to Plan be and went to another fair, bought another tourtière from someone who wasn't Phyllis and well, let's just say that when tourtière is good it is very, very good and when it's not it is horrid. (I'm pretty sure you can guess which is was.)
So were were now on Plan C. I would make a tourtière! I have a tourtière recipe I've hoarded for years. Surely that would be tasty right? Or so I thought until I looked at the recipe. Good tourtière is made of a mix of ground meats. There's usually ground pork and after that there could also be ground beef, veal, lamb or some kind of game meat. Sometimes there's small bits of potatoes. Very rarely I've seen teeny, tiny bits of carrots but mostly it's just meat and maybe potatoes. The thing that keeps it from just being ground meat in a pie shell (which is maybe exactly what the horrid one was) is the spices.
A good tourtière will contain some ground clove, possibly also some allspice. I've even seen a few with nutmeg and cinnamon. Now if you are anything like one my friends you are wrinkling up your nose and saying, "Christmas spices? In a meat pie? Ick." You would also be very, very wrong. The pie doesn't taste like any of those things. There's just enough there to give it depth and make you wonder what makes it taste so good before you decide that you don't care and ask for seconds.
What I quickly realized looking at this recipe I hoarded for years is that it doesn't have any spices. It has a mix of meats (pork, lamb and beef) and potatoes but no spices. Sassymonkey recipe hoarding and Plan C FAIL! I've pretty much given up on the whole idea of tourtière for the holidays this year but I've started to look for recipes for next year. Phyllis will still be my first choice, because I could never duplicate Phyllis's pie crust, but I still will need a Plan B.
There's Simply French's French-Canadian Tourtière recipe. It certainly sounds good, and the thyme
