My family was not so great at holiday traditions. Then and now, I chalked it up to proximity: my parents and I lived about 15 minutes away from my grandparents and, on average, we saw each other at least three times a week. When the holidays rolled around, the occasion wasn’t all that special — just another of our many weekly visits. Why make a fuss?
There was one area where my grandmother did make a fuss, though. After church on Christmas Eve, my parents and I would speed over to my grandparents’ house, where we’d find my grandmother, Grace, pulling a piping hot tourtière — a French-Canadian meat pie — from the oven. We’d gather round the table for thick slices of pie (the adults would have mustard on the side; as a picky eater, I avoided most condiments), coffee, and the usual chit-chat.
The pie itself was transformative. The scent of the pie — a rich mixture of beef and pork, savory pie crust, and cinnamon and cloves — and the warmth of the kitchen, almost too hot after its hours as a makeshift pie factory, were a demarcation line. Before the pie, there was school and work and church and everything about Christmas that was boring and interminable. After pie, there was nothing but presents, hot cups of tea and coffee, an endless array of snacks, and naps on the couch. The pie promised a better world, one where the whole family set aside its usual dysfunctions for a few hours and bonded over food. The adults would share stories. My grandfather talked about his French-Canadian family, my grandmother of her years growing up on a farm in North Carolina. My parents reminisced about the years they lived in Hawaii, while my father was in the Navy. And I ate and listened intently until my head grew heavy and I slipped off to the living room for a nap.
My grandmother, like many grandmothers, was a constant baker. From childhood through my late 20s, at least once a month she’d send me home with a package full of blueberry muffins or buttermilk biscuits. But the tourtière was special — she made them only at Christmas, and they were so good that there were rarely leftovers. Each year, I’d hold on firmly to the memory of the previous year’s pies and wait patiently for Christmas to arrive once again.
About 10 years ago, as my grandmother’s health declined, she stopped making tourtière. And because we were not so great with traditions, and because I assumed I was hopeless when it came to cooking and baking, I never asked her how to make it myself. She died in 2011, and my family’s one Christmas tradition retreated into memory — but only for a short time. In 2012, a friend shared a tourtière recipe on Facebook, and simply reading the recipe brought back a flood of sense-memories. I made one pie, then another, and then another. And when I made my first pie of the season a few weeks ago, I realized the tradition had become my own. I’m getting better at baking and carrying on the tradition; in a few years I might be as good as my grandmother at both. Maybe.
Tourtière
Start to finish: About 2 hours
Servings: 8 slices
I’ve adapted this recipe from tourtière rock star Sarah Lachance, my personal meat pie guru. The recipe scales well, so go nuts and make a bunch of pies at once. They freeze well and make for great gifts. My girlfriend and I are gluten-free, and just about any of the commercial gluten-free pie crust mixes work well for this recipe.
Ingredients
1 1/2 lbs. ground pork
1 lbs. ground beef
1 large baking potato
1 large onion, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1 dash ground allspice
1/2 cup water
1 recipe for 9-inch double crust pie
1 egg
Prepare your pie crust beforehand, especially if you’re making multiple pies.
Peel and boil the potato until done. Mash and set aside.
Place the potato, ground pork, ground beef, onion, garlic, spices, and water in a large frying pan and simmer until very thick, for about
an hour.
While the filling is cooking, prepare your pie crust and preheat oven
to 350 F.
When filling is finished, let it cool. Line a deep-dish pie plate with bottom crust. Spoon in filling, spreading evenly. Cover with top crust.
Pinch the edges of the crust and brush with beaten egg. Cut steam vent in top of pie. Bake for 50 minutes at 350 F. If the edges brown too fast, cover with a strip of foil. Serve warm.