An Old Standby: Tourtierre

Easy As Pie

Easy as pie as long as you use Pillsbury Pie Dough....ha! Here's the thing, I can actually say with confidence that I'm a good cook. Baker? Ahem, I have my challenges. While my friend Carey (aka Martha, for her Stewart-like prowess) can whip out a pie dough like nobody's business, I struggle and it never comes out the way I want. So why torture myself when Pillsbury is pretty damn good?

So, this weekend, I had my Pillsbury Pie Doughs and other fixin's ready to make some Tourtierre....Canadian Meat Pie. My brother in law Al's Mom....Memere to us....makes a mean tourtierre and her daughters and granddaghters and daughter in law (sister Di) do a fine job.  However, I'm not sure how it happened, I ended up with the recipe from my neighbor Tom who makes his mother-in-law Marcel's, another woman of French Canadian descent, recipe.  This is simple, home cooking. Ingredients are few, and easy to remember.

This recipe makes two pies, because there is just absolutely no sense in making one tourtierre at a time. Trust me on this. The first pie will be gone in no time.

Tourtierre

1 lb ground pork

1 lb gound beef

(though you can use 2 lbs pork if you like...that's what I did this time as I didn't find the 1 lb of beef I had in freezer until after I made the pie!)

1 medium onion

6-8 lg potatoes- cooked and mashed

s & p

1/2- 1tsp allspice (recipe calls for 1/2, I tend to like a bit more, but don't go overboard...you can also use cloves instead of allspice, but I prefer the allspice)

2 pie crusts- one for bottom and one for top

Dice onion. Cook meat and onion.

Drain grease, but leave a little fat. While cooking meat, boil potatoes, drain and mash.

Mix meat and potatoes together with spices.

Put bottom pie crust in pie dish, spread mixture over crust and top with second crust.

Do the same for second pie. Bake at 400f for 30 minutes. 

Best served with some kind of chunky relish (like zuchini relish or piccalili or even beets). Yields 2 pies.

Since we have a french thing going here, I might as well show you how my Bon Courage illustration turned out.

One more note, I'm on tumblr now.  Our etsy shop was getting traffic from one of my illustrations that was featured on a couple of blogs on tumblr, so I jumped on the bandwagon. Just getting started but if you're on tumblr, let me know so we can connect.  You'll find me here on tumblr.

Here's to a new week, new challenges and new adventures.  Make it a great one.

Ciao for now,