Traditional Tourtière & All Butter Pastry

Ahh, this thing was a masterpiece! I was inspired to make tourtière (pronounced tort-ee-AIR) for the first time this year in honour of Canada Day. My family on my paternal grandmother’s side is French Canadian, having arrived in Quebec in the 1690s. French Canadian cooking is the ultimate comfort food, I think—Quebec winters are bloody cold and it seems that even summer doesn’t last very long. Traditional dishes like split pea soup, maple syrup pie, tourtière, sugar pie, butter tarts, and all manner of other pastries and stick-to-your-bones baked goods and meats are actually pretty easy to cook, and I have plans on attempting a few other newer French Canadian treats too—croissants and bagels. Mm.

At its heart though, tourtière is a simple mince meat (usually pork) pie with some unique spicing; cinnamon and cloves. I grew up thinking this combination was absolutely normal, since that’s how dad always made hamburgers—turns out it’s a throwback to his Montreal upbringing.

The Australians to whom I served this thought it was fantastic, so I guess it goes to show that a delicious meat pie is going to be appreciated in any culture.

Also take note that I’ve used a new recipe for pastry—an all-butter one from Smitten Kitchen. I do quite love my basic pastry recipe, but it requires a few more ingredients and requires a careful hand. This all-butter pastry is very quick, ever-so-flaky, and hard to screw up! (And got compliments from boys who could care less about these things. Just sayin’.)

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Edited: July 10th, 2011

Roasted Vegetable Crepe Cake

Let’s talk about crepes again, shall we? My love affair for crepes continues—and this roasted vegetable crepe “cake” is just one of the various recipes I’m sure I’ll be posting on the blog. This is actually quite a similar recipe and process to the roasted vegetable tortilla stack, another great vegetarian option for dinner. The versatility of this kind of recipe is something to be appreciated, since you can use any blend of vegetables to your liking… and let’s be honest, anything held together primarily by cheese has got to be good. Right? Right. It’s certainly my cooking philosophy!

You’ll need to have made a batch or two of crepes before making this cake, and they will all need to be roughly the same size and shape. When making your crepes, consider what size they’d need to be to fit comfortably into a round baking dish, too—they should fit snugly, without too much of a gap and without having to curl up too much on the sides. You could probably bake this free-standing if you had to, but I certainly recommend spending the $10 on a simple springform pan since it’ll make your life a lot easier!

On another note, I’m sad (and you probably are too, right?) that I haven’t been posting more recently. Life has just been busy—darn life!—and combined with Easter holidays, time seems to be whipping by without me getting a chance to write things up. Horrible! But hopefully I’ll be back posting more regularly again now that things have calmed down a bit. There’s a bit of good news too—our new roommate is gluten intolerant, so you coeliacs will be getting a whole lot more attention! Turns out that cooking gluten free isn’t as hard as I thought it would be; you just have to be mindful of ingredients that might have wheat products in them that you might not realize (like soy sauce, or stock powder, who knew, right?). Anyway—on with the recipe!

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Edited: April 26th, 2011

The Best Stuffing Ever

Ahh… stuffing. Probably one of my favourite parts of a holiday meal. I’ll go back for seconds just of stuffing, even before dessert—honestly, it’s a wonder that I don’t make it all the time and stuff myself silly with it! (Pardon the pun.) With a bit of cranberry sauce and turkey and gravy… it’s the best bite of the whole meal. I’ll be honest; Christmas in July was just a big excuse for me to eat stuffing and pie. Can you blame me?!

While my family calls this ‘stuffing,’ I think it’s been years since anyone has actually bothered to put it in a bird. As such, this stuffing can actually be made vegetarian! Salty and savoury, soft and moist but also crisp and toasted, once you get the hang of this stuffing you’ll never go back. Plus, it can be made the night before you need it, just ready to pop in the oven.

Still to come on the Christmas train: “How to cook a holiday feast tricks & tips!”, maple syrup pie, and Sandies!

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Edited: July 29th, 2010

Roasted Vegetable Tortilla Stack

Tortilla stacks are a wonderful dinner, in my opinion, and are such a versatile dish once you get used to the basics. My mum often made a “Mexican” version of this, which had refried beans, onions, salsa, and sometimes ground beef in it. This particular recipe I discovered in a cookbook my friend Ramsay brought with him to Australia (check it out at the bottom of the post, you know a cookbook is good when it gets schlepped to the other side of the world!), and is a bit of a twist on the recipe my mum used often.

I would say that this is a cheap, healthy dish that works great for leftovers, except that every time we serve this up it never seems to make it to the leftover stage! Everyone just gobbles it right up. Oh well, I guess I can’t really complain, can I? It takes a bit of love and care to make, but is well worth the effort.

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Edited: June 16th, 2010