It's Tourtière Time!

And a food gift suggestion for the holidays

My take on Mme Benoît’s famous tourtière.

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A bit of news

Following requests from so many who enjoyed our Instagram wines lives started during the pandemic, Jean Aubry and I decided to present a new format. So for the past month or so, we’ve been making short wine videos for Instagram called Two Wines Two takes in English, and Deux Vins Deux Avis in French. The response has been terrific so I decided to start a second Instagram page devoted to these videos. We plan on alternating between French and English videos so watch, enjoy, follow, and pick up some great new wine suggestions.

twowinestwotakes

A post shared by Lesley Chesterman and Jean Aubry (@twowinestwotakes)

Let’s Talk Tourtière!

Or should I say meat pie?

I recently ran a recipe for Mme Jehane Benoît’s orange cake and promised to include a recipe for her tourtière. Arguably her most famous recipe, Benoît’s tourtière is a very simple mix that calls for ground pork, onion, some spices and bread crumbs. I found the original recipe, tried it out and… disaster!

I don’t know if it’s because pork meat is so much leaner today than in the sixties when she published her recipe but the resulting filling was dry, dull and crumbly. After asking around for advice, I was told to add some mashed potato and even some of the potato cooking water. I did and the results were excellent. I also upped the spices and ended up doubling the amount of filling to make a nice, thick meat pie.

Authenticity sticklers would insist I mention that the correct term for this pie is pâte à la viande (meat pie) and NOT tourtière, which I have been reminded of time and time again. So I did a little research and technically, tourtière and meat pie are both part of the family comprised of dough-wrapped meat pies. BUT the difference is that the real-deal tourtière is filled with cubed meat, whereas a pâte à la viande (meat pie) is made with ground meat. I’ve also read that a true tourtière must contain beef, pork and/or veal. I’m sure there are other theories as well.

So the recipe below is indeed for a meat pie. I stand corrected — even though to me it will always be a tourtière, probably because I grew up eating La Belle Fermière tourtière.

Truth be told, I’ve never had much success making tourtières meat pies, but after some tests I think the version below is really quite fabulous. Possibly even, the BEST I’ve ever tasted! Just be sure that your potato water isn’t too salty and that your pie dough is at least partly made with lard. Mme Benoît was the spokesperson for the Canadian brand of lard called Tenderflake, so no doubt she would approve.

Ready for baking!

Tourtière (ok ok….meat pie)

for 6 portions