Tourtière

Tourtière du Lac St-Jean

Our daughter is a student at our local Waldorf school, a school that does things a bit different from the norm you could say. Their intent is to meet the child where they're at based on their development, and each grade has a series of stories or theme to the year. This year being Grade Five, they are in a year of transition, not quite a teenager yet but not feeling like they can relate to the younger kids in the school either. It is a year meant to give them a solid foundation, preparing them for the Middle School and all of the tumultuous things that await them in the coming years. (Hormones! Projects! Realizing the world around them is bigger than their family and friends!) They start with a focus on the world directly around them through local geography and botany, studying how the people adapted to the land and hearing their stories. They start to branch out into the greater world, starting with Ancient civilizations. They learn about history through mythology to see how myths were born out of reality. Their teacher will tell stories and lead them through work on Ancient India, Persia, Mesopotamia, the culture of Ancient Egypt, dabbling in Greek Mythology and ending the year with a tremendous travel themselves to a city in BC to meet up with other same-aged Waldorf school children, at the Greek Olympics. These stories and ways of leading these 10- and 11- year olds through this year is meant to give them that solid base of home and understanding of the outer world, and starting them on their path of figuring out how they fit in to the greater world and just what is their contribution to that world. Diversity is celebrated, and in fact, tonight's dinner was a celebration of that diversity!

Her class teacher organized a Multi-Cultural Night at our school, in celebration of those cultures that are represented in our class families. Each family was encouraged to bring a dish that celebrates their culture, a food traditionally found in their food repertoire. There were delicious offerings of sushi, perogies, samosas, salami and sauerkraut, pastries, bannock, an eggplant dish, empanadas, BBQ pork buns, jambalaya, pea soup, lamb stew, clam chowder, corn bread and green beans; it really was a feast fit for royalty. Countries represented at the dinner included Norway, Canada, England, Afghanistan, India, Ireland, China, Korea, Scotland, France, Colombia, Denmark, Germany. Our family contributed from both sides, we are lucky to be sharing a city with one set of grand-parents. They represented my father-in-law's roots from Mississippi and brought corn bread and green beans. As my ancestry is part French-Canadian, it was a no brainer that our family's contribution would be one of those staples from Christmas time at my house, tourtière. But not just any tourtière, the Acadian version.

I grew up in a home where my Mom was cooking from scratch all the time; we were the lucky consumers of homegrown veggies and meals made by my Mom. My grand-parents lived next door, so it was a regular thing to go over after school to help my Grand-Maman make cookies (she never followed a recipe! She was amazing!), tarte au sucre, or my Grand-Papa's favourite, Tarte aux raisins. You knew Christmas was upon us when you could smell my mom and Grand-Maman making tourtière, the traditional meat pie served at French-Canadian Christmas feasts and Réveillons since the dawn of time I think! Those scent memories still live in me, witnessed by my gut reaction when preparing this pie last night for the celebration tonight. I was misty-eyed, as the flood of memories came; I immediately thought “Christmas is soon! Everyone will be here soon! This must also mean there are Christmas cookies already baked and stashed away in the house somewhere, I should go look!” Sigh.

Tourtière is a traditional French-Canadian meat pie, and most would be familiar with the version made out of ground meat, either a combination of meats or one single type of ground. My dad has gotten into making a ground chicken version these last few years; I refuse to veer away from the ones that were regulars in my childhood. Call me sentimental, call me old school, I just love this version so much better. If done correctly and with enough time to allow the meat to mellow, it just Melts. in. Your. Mouth. The Acadian version uses stew meat instead, 1 part beef to 2 part pork. Onions are also added late in the game. It's really quite a simple process, and one I continue offering in tradition to my family at this time every year.

I'm including the recipe here, as it was dictated to me by my Maman some 10 or more years ago. The colours look bland, and with such a short list of ingredients, do not be fooled. This ain't a bland tasting seasonal treat at all.  I hope you like it.

TOURTIERE DU LAC ST-JEAN (à Grand-Maman Lena et aussi Lorraine)
This amount makes about 2 pies

In a big pot, add 1 lb stew beef cut in cubes and 2 lbs pork shoulder roast cut in cubes. (You might want to remove the fat off of the pork.)
Put enough water in the pot, not enough to cover the meat but enough to see that there is water in there.
Add some salt and pepper.
Stir the meat from time to time as it cooks, breaking the meat up into shreds as it cooks. When the meat is about shredded and is almost done cooking (it will give up its toughness as it cooks), add 4 chopped onions. Let this cook until it's a good consistency. This will take a total of about 5-6 hours, with the onions added for that last hour.
Drain fat or juice if it's too soggy, or add bread crumbs to help absorb those juices in order to make it not leaky. Adjust your salt and pepper. Put in your pie shell, and add your pie lid. Bake at 350F for 1 hour or until the top crust is a nice golden brown.

Fleur de lis tourtière

Serve it with a yummy relish, like this Zucchini relish my mom still makes. (I've fermentified it, of course. Scuse, Maman.) 

Wishes to you for a smooth sailing kind of season ahead. Keep chaos at bay, friends. And make some tourtière.

*And truly, this being 2015 and in the spirit of sanity, I opted to use a store-purchased pie shell. I found a quite clean version in the freezer at my favourite local Health Food Store I felt ok using, from Wholly Wholesome. Straight up ingredients: organic wheat flour, organic palm oil, water, organic cane sugar, sea salt. My adrenals were requesting a free hall pass for this one. I obliged.

A MONTH OF PUTTING UP THE HARVEST - Day 19

What to do, what to do. I love tomatoes. #harvest2015

On the weekend, I had the good fortune of a large vehicle with lots of loading potential (read: fresh fruit and veggie haul). I spent the weekend in the Shuswap, running away from the frost threat in Calgary and visiting family, hanging by the beach, and visiting my favourite local fruit stands in search of a good deal. So haul I did. I brought back 80 pounds of roma tomatoes, 10 pounds of organic peaches, 5 pounds of locally grown blueberries, a few bundles of locally grown organic beets, a carton of fresh plums, some this-year's-apples and many-a-bag of fresh basil. That was just my order, never mind a few friends' that went in to the back of my red van. 

So while many of my tasks in the coming days involve putting up as I already have this month (let's call it round two for frozen blueberries), I am busying myself with more tomato projects. May I introduce you to the most delicious, unequivocally easiest sauce you will ever make: the pizza sauce.

The mixer, my kitchen's workhorse since 1997. #harvest2015

Amongst other things this week, I am putting up an octupled version (yeah I did) of the quick and easy pizza sauce, which I broke out into two big batches. For each batch, I washed about 28-30 roma tomatoes, and threw them in my mixer along with about 9-10 garlic cloves, and blitzed them to high heavens. I did not take off any stems nor did I peel the skins, because have we not figured this out yet? I'm as lazy as they come. To this mash, I added four teaspoons of dried oregano and some dried chili peppers, along with some sea salt and cracked pepper.

Chopped tomatoes, garlic, oregano, hot peppers, S+P. Coming to a pizza near you. #harvest2015

The trick to this sauce's deliciousness factor (yes, it's a word) (I'm writing this with my sister reading over my shoulder. Bear with me.). Yes, the trick to this sauce's deliciousness factor is to preheat the biggest pot you've got on high heat with nothing in it; the high heat will facilitate the caramelization of those tomatoes, morphing them into saucy goodness. You will want to drop your butter in the pan only a few moments before you will add the tomatoes and herbs to the mix, so make sure you have everything done and ready to go. 

Once your pan is smoking hot, drop in about 4 or 5 tablespoons of butter, let it melt (it will turn brown, it's ok) and when it's done melting, throw in your tomatoes/garlic/oregano/chilis/S+P, mixing soon after adding in. Make sure to give your pot a stir every minute or so as it heats up, to make sure the bottom tomatoes don't get too scorched. Keep the high heat high to caramelize the tomatoes. Once your sauce is going at a hard simmer, keep mixing and put the timer on for 12-14 minutes, still on high. Towards the end of cooking, taste the sauce and adjust your flavours (salt to make it taste stronger, a bit of brown sugar or honey to mellow out a particularly acidic sauce). When your sauce is glossy on top and has a sheen to it, that is when you know the pot is ready to take off the stovetop. Taste it at different spots along the timer too, to get to know how it changes in flavours. 

Pizza sauce with gloss making a spluttery mess, ready for the close-up. #harvest2015

I then went on to make that second quadruple batch making it officially octupled, with the same list of ingredients prepared the same way, and I have enough pizza sauce to last me the next year. Truth be told, I use this sauce as a pasta sauce or like I did for tonight's dinner, as a base along with some balsamic, rosemary, bay leaf, red wine, wild mushrooms and leftover pulled beef I had in my freezer. I like to package in containers to the freezer, but also drop some sauce in ice cube trays and pop in the freezer for a few days, so that I may keep a stash of ready-to-defrost cubes of sauce for those lazy end-of-hectic-week Friday night dinners, or for mornings where I need to whip something up lightning fast to send for lunch with my girlie to school.

Pre-portioned pizza sauce in ice cube trays for quick-and-dirty meals later in my frazzled year. #harvest2015

Now that I have 40 pounds of tomatoes done for today, must get to the next 40 pounds for tomorrow's work. (Thank goodness this only happens for a few weeks every year. I couldn't keep up this nutty pace!)

A MONTH OF SALADS - Day 22

Salad rolls. Who said salad had to be served in a bowl or plate with cutlery?

Day 22. The final day of this month's foray into salad making. During this month, my family and I tasted our way through full meal salads, on to simple sides, flavours from other parts of the world, easy lunch salads and flavour explosions. Today's offering, as a means of wrapping things up, is to say that salad doesn't need to be served on a plate or a bowl; you don't need to use utensils. Why when the weather is scorching, and you're looking for something fun to make for dinner, think of these salad rolls! Easy peasy lemon squeezie. 

First things first. As there were again only two of us here at home, my little opted to have her favourite sweet chili sauce (a bottled version). I opted for a revisit of the peanut dressing from the Orchid Lime Salad from Whitewater Cooks, as the flavour was explosive and I just couldn't help myself. It seems a good salad roll needs a good substantial thick dressing in which to dip, and a zingy one at that. This one fits the bill to a T.

Shirataki noodles. Find them in the refrigerator section of your Asian supermarket.

As most salad rolls come with some delicious slurpy noodles in them, I opted to pick up some Shirataki noodles while at the Korean and Japanese Grocery Store down on 10th Ave at 14th Street in the SW. These noodles are so easy to prepare: just dump in a strainer straight from the package, and rinse them out. And voila, they're ready to use up!  They're a low-carb option for those who watch these kinds of things; me, I'm just looking for something quick and easy. They're made of a specific type of yam, and are quite high in fibre. They really have no taste, so lend themselves well to something like these salad rolls, especially if you have a tangy slurpy peanut mess of a sauce to bathe it all in.

Next, I sliced and chopped a variety of veggies we had on hand. This is quite reminiscent of the piles of ingredients I had on the Vietnamese Noodle Bowl salad day; it's the same concept. Each person gets to make their own salad rolls and the rule in our house is that you have to include at least 3 different vegetables. So in our piles on the butcher block were: arugula, pea sprouts, lettuce, radishes, carrots, cucumber, red cabbage, green onion, celery and yellow peppers. Not seen: black sesame seeds. What should have been included: cooked shrimp. They're delicious in something like this, but I forgot to defrost them in time. Also delicious in this would have been some avocado. You could also add some shredded nori crackers, or a smidge of kimchi or some other ferment in the midst of the pile-o-veg. It's up to you.

It's all about the options.

Next up, you prepare a big bowl of warm water, and you prep your rice papers (I prefer round ones for this). You soak one rice paper at a time, and really no longer than a count of 3. When you take it out of the water, it will seem improbable that it will ever bend enough, but by the time you load the paper up with your fixings, it will be flexible enough and not over-soaked. This way, it will hold the ingredients together much better and be less prone to ripping. 

Pile your ingredients one on top of the other in a mound in the centre of your paper, sprinkle on some seeds at the end. Tuck two sides of the paper in just to close off the ends, and then roll your rice paper up like a big cigar. 

This is where you can have some fun: you can mix those noodles in with a sauce like the one I used for dipping, or a soy-sesame concoction or something, or even a roasted red pepper kind of dip in order to add flavour. This is an incredibly versatile recipe. We both rolled four salad rolls each; I finished mine because I couldn't help myself, but my little lady stopped short of the last one. These are also good things to pull together to bring potluck style to someone's house; my good friend Erica does this all the time, and they are always the favourite item on the buffet table.

And that will do it, my friends! A big thank you to my parents who were the originators of month-of-salads: my parents and we four kidlets tended our vegetable patches every summer in our back yard and at our farm or our cottage, in fact they still do. My dad just received his Master Gardener designation! And my mom is the original Salad Queen, I owe my love of veggies to her. I thank the local suppliers that time and again inspire me to play with my food, and a big thanks go to my two honeys for putting up with these salad trials. I hope to post a compendium of my month of salads in the next day or so, be sure to check in to this 'posts' page and mark it for future reference, or share with ones you think would dig the recipes. I'm all ears as to other topics you'd like to cover in these monthly-type of food escapades, drop a comment below and I'll consider it! And let me know how you get on with these salads, or others you've come across that have caught your fancy. 

And people, for goodness sake, GO PLAY WITH YOUR FOOD.

Salad rolls, with Shiratake and Peanut Dressing from Whitewater Cooks

A MONTH OF SALADS - Day 18

This morning, I set out to do a simple pea-mint-feta kind of salad for dinner, as I thought it would be a refreshing side to add to the butter chicken, which was a request from my little. I usually have a few bags of organic peas in my freezer, I thought for sure I must have some. Instead, I found the last dregs of a bag we've been using lately, but no backup in the freezer; I resorted instead to what I have on hand. As most people do most nights, amiright? This was a "quick! toss it together! and get out the door!" kind of salad. This last week of June always seems so loaded every year; loaded with expectations, with good byes, with quick conversations on summer plans and tentative camping plans being set up (heck ya!). There are meetings to attend, and year-end concerts and final soccer games, the pressure just feels like it's ON. And I'm ok with that. I still love food at these times, and really use that short window of prep time to make something delicious so at least we can all share a meal together. Well, today was not one of those days. (See how I set you up there?) I had the most wonderful afternoon with my little, wrapping up her current school year with lunch on the town and throwing rocks in the river. But we ran out of time to do our annual tradition of picking a super summer read (new book!) on the way home from all this. I had a meeting to get to across town through rush hour traffic, so the window of prep got cut right short. It's ok. I roll with the punches. I still had to make that butter chicken...

Well that was to be left in my honey's very capable hands. I on the other hand, now had 25 minutes to make my dinner-to-go, clean up and look fairly decent. And then, found out there were no peas. Again, witness, me rolling with the punches. I put the water on. I blanched some frozen green beans (thank you freezer), and added that last bit of peas I had in the freezer at the very end. Tossed in some of my now-frozen-but-pre-soaked-sprouted-then-cooked-Puy-lentils from A Month of Salads Day 7 in order to get them to defrost. Drained the lot, and ran it through cold water to shock them and stop the cooking. 

In the meantime, I chopped some spinach I had on hand, added a fistful of chopped pea sprouts from Hotchkiss just down the road from yyc, an equal fistful of mint from my garden (even used my strawberry mint here. Interesting!). I knew chlorophyll was going to be the main attraction in this salad. What's not to love?

spinach mint and pea sprouts. talk about super greens.

On top of this green mound, I added more green (and white and purple): the green beans, smidgen of peas and puy lentils, crumbled some feta, some fermented red onions (quick ferment in brine for 1 week; alternately, you could do pickled red onions) and added some fresh Johnny Jump Up flowers my little pulled out of our patch out back. Did you know you could grow flowers and eat them? Get yourself acquainted with ones you can eat STAT. Because it is one of my favourite summer things.

So tucked the container in my bag, along with a package of seaweed crisps and a few water kefirs to share. Oh yes, and the dressing: maybe 2 tbsp of olive, 1 tbsp of red wine vinegar, 1 tbsp of honey, 1 tsp mustard, S&P. And off I went, to my evening of work. Feasted on this baby, along with my two colleagues/friends. Just pulled in; it's 1.15am. Thank goodness for good friends in this life, who I could spend hours talking with about anything and everything. I am posting this and am now off to bed. And planning a stop tomorrow to get that summer book read for my lady.

Mom was right, kids: EAT YOUR GREENS. And for my friends in need of thyroid support, swap out that goitrogenic spinach for something like an arugula or romaine lettuce. You're welcome.

Super greens lentil feta violet salad

A MONTH OF SALADS - Day 16

This is one of my go-to salads I pull out on a regular basis. It's one of those perfect-for-a-potluck kind of salads. And it's straight up easy, my friends. Don't be fooled by the seemingly long list of ingredients! Sure, it's a chopped salad which means you'll be chopping, but consider chopping a meditative activity. I use this time to also think of those who will be eating this salad, and have often wondered if that energy makes its way into the food at all. Maybe yes, maybe no, regardless, I think this salad was a hit tonight. 

During this month of salads challenge I threw myself at the end of May, I knew this one would make an appearance. I knew it would somehow tie in to having a meal at someone else's house. And lo and behold, here we are on Day 16 and my re-jigged version of this Ottolenghi classic Na'ama's Fattoush Recipe from Jerusalem: A Cookbook makes an appearance. As Sunday was the Solstice, a friend gathered like-minded folks to celebrate and share a meal with great conversations while children run amok amongst us. These nights are favourites of mine: it seems I am so fortunate to always meet such interesting folks who really are doing fascinating work and have good stories to tell. This friend of mine, sweet Carmen, well she has a talent when it comes to curating a fabulous list of people for a dinner party. I just feel so lucky to be included in such good circles. And the food! The food! It always involves a BBQ something or other, and we all bring salad. In fact, at tonight's gathering we talked about starting a First-Sunday-of-the-month-Supper-Club kind of deal, the company and food was so fabulous. COUNT. US. IN.

Sumac is really worth finding and adding in. Tastes like no other.

Our contribution to the evening (aside from the perpetual jar of Creme Fraiche I seem to bring with me everywhere!) was a version of Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi's Fattoush recipe, probably originating from Sami's mom, or so the legend goes. Follow the link below for the full recipe. My alterations: I only did half of the dressing ingredients, and mixed all of those together instead of adding them to the actual salad. I used only yogurt, no milk (because I like me the fermented things, see?), and whizzed it with the garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, apple cider vinegar and dried mint. If you're in Calgary, you can find Sumac at Shaganappi Grocer, on the south side of 17th Ave SW, just west of 36th St.

My veggies were a bit different, I added the tomato, radishes, cucumbers, green onions and fresh mint in the recipe, but I added a whole bunch of parsley instead of a smidge, threw in some chives from the garden and a half a fennel. I just love the crunchy anise taste of the fennel. It's like a celery I can actually like, nay, love.

To chop fennel, slice off the fronds and base of bulb, cut the bulb in half and in half again, and slice out the tough inner core. Thinly slice the remaining parts of the bulb, add liberally to salads. You can use the fronds to flavour your salad, or add them to your next sauerkraut, yumyum!

I also omitted the pita bread. I suppose this means it is no longer a Fattoush salad and maybe just a chopped salad. Whatever it is, it's such a refreshing salad, I could eat this one for days.  

My own version of the Fattoush Salad from Jerusalem: A Cookbook.

Thank you for the invitation for our family to join the gaggles of folks at your house, Carmen and Jim. And thank you to the constant inspirations from the London-based Ottolenghi restaurant and cookbooks.