Tourtière is made differently in every home, and can incite intense feelings of loyalty to ones mother. I will proceed cautiously with a definition, but I warn you: there are lots of qualifiers in this post.
Tourtière is meat pie. It is often based on pork, though veal and game are also common. If anyone tells you that it was traditionally made with pigeon, you can politely dismiss their story as folklore. A false etymology has developed because of the similarity between the words for the pie tourtière and the Quebecois word for the now-extinct passenger pigeon, tourte. Certainly many a pigeon has been baked into pie, but the similarity between the two words is entirely coincidental. Tourte also … Continue reading.
Sugar plums are one of those items that are common in Christmas carols and stories and yet are basically unknown to modern revelers. (Other examples: wassail, yule, and figgy pudding. Furthermore, I’ve never seen mistletoe before, and I just saw real holly for the first time a few weeks ago, at the farmers’ market. I got excited, grabbed the leaves, and stabbed myself.)
My dictionary defines a sugar plum as a small ball of candy, and nothing more. There are not necessarily any plums in sugar plums. The word “plum” is associated with dried fruit, and good modern dictionaries still give one of the many meanings of “plum” as “a raisin.” The most common manifestation of sugar plums is … Continue reading.
In North America, this style of dough is called tart dough, or possibly short dough. In France it’s known as pâte brisée.[1]
Pie dough has clumps of butter that separate the sheets of flour and water, creating a tender, flaky crust. Tart dough is not flaky. It has a very fine, even texture, and a delicate crispiness. Actually it’s kind of like a thin shortbread cookie. The butter is incorporated as tiny uniform pieces, instead of the irregular chunks in pie dough. The cook also has to be careful not to develop too much gluten, otherwise the cooked tart will be tough.
Besides being the base for classic tarts, this dough could also be used for custard-type … Continue reading.
On the North American frontier, it was not uncommon for the pioneer housewife to bake 21 pies a week – one for every meal.
-from Professional Cooking for Canadian Chefs, Sixth Edition
I’ve posted several recipes in which I make a hand-waving reference to, “your favourite pie dough” or “standard pie dough” without giving any idea of what exactly I mean by that. (Examples: Rabbit pie, pumpkin pie, sour cherry pie, pheasant pot pie.) For the sake of completeness and concision I thought I’d tell you my preferred recipe and method for making North American pie dough.
I think we’ve all had both very good and very bad pies in our time. Good pie … Continue reading.
I know I already posted today, but I wanted to quickly tell you about some cutting-edge developments in the composition and aging of the 2012 fruitcake.
Hazelnuts lose their spot to almonds. For three years now my fruitcake has been poundcake flavoured with orange zest, garnished with glacé Evans cherries, candied Navel orange peel, and roasted hazelnuts. The cherries are the star. They bring loads of flavour, acidity to balance the buttery luxury of the cake, plus they’re from Lisa’s dad’s backyard.
Working with Evans cherries over the past couple years, we’ve noticed that their aroma has a distinct note of almond extract. For some reason this aroma is especially evident in the single-varietal rumpots we’ve made. This … Continue reading.
Crabapple is my favourite jelly, hands down. The perfect balance of tart and sweet. A distinct, local flavour sitting in the pantry all year.
The following recipe works well for the Dolgo crabapples we get from Lisa’s dad’s backyard. I imagine there is huge variation in sweetness, acidity, and pectin content in crabapples across the region, so I can’t say for certain if this will work for you. But it’s a good base recipe.
For the record, I don’t core the apples. I don’t even stem them. I remove leaves, if I find it convenient. I mash with a fork and strain through a jelly-bag, so the seeds and stems don’t end up in the jelly. Pressing cider with Kevin … Continue reading.
I know: jellies aren’t hip. When I say “fruit jelly” you immediately think of your great aunt, or possibly high tea at the Fairmont Empress. Jellies are stuffy.
I love jellies for three reasons: one, they’re tasty and I eat them for breakfast; two, they’re extremely handy to have in the pantry, to stir into sauces or inject into doughnuts; three, they are beautiful, visually and conceptually. Actually they’re a bit like headcheese, conceptually: the cook extracts a natural thickener from the main ingredient, then concentrates it to form a network that gives the food a unique, wobbly texture.
If that piqued your interest even remotely, please, read on.
I love pumpkin pie, but there are a few things about the classic preparation that I don’t understand. First and foremost, why we use canned mix when there’s a stack of fresh pumpkins at every grocery store this time of year.
Lisa and I get loads of squash from Tipi Creek every fall, so often we make “squash pie” instead of “pumpkin pie.” Obviously they’re very similar. Hubbard squash, pictured at left, makes fantastic pie, as do butternut, buttercup, and acorn squash.
Using fresh squash allows you to adjust the flavour and colour of the custard. Canned pumpkin is dark like caramel, I assume from a lengthy cook that reduces and browns the flesh (though that’s just a guess… maybe … Continue reading.
Last year I wrote briefly about evergreen syrup, flavoured with the flourescent, tender bundles of needles that appear on spruce trees in spring. I first came across this preparation in Austria, where the restaurant I was working at used the syrup to flavour a sauce accompanying the roasted leg of a May deer, a fantastic, fantastic example of terroir-driven flavour pairing. The syrup also has obvious applications in the pastry kitchen.
This week I made the syrup myself for the first time, and I want to relate a few of the details of its preparation.
I’m kicking myself for not getting an exact recipe from Looshaus. I recall that they brought the syrup and evergreen tips to a … Continue reading.
Last week I tapped my maple trees, and since then I have collected about one teaspoon of sap from the buckets.
I recently learned that the spring sap run is a completely separate phenomenon from the normal transportation of water and nutrients through the stems of the maple during the growing season. That transportation is going to happen no matter what. The sap run, on the other hand, might not, as it requires a very specific set of circumstances, and is not a biologically necessary phenomenon from the tree’s standpoint.
Before we tackle the question of why sap runs, we need some background info on maples.
Tourtière is made differently in every home, and can incite intense feelings of loyalty to ones mother. I will proceed cautiously with a definition, but I warn you: there are lots of qualifiers in this post.
I know I already posted today, but I wanted to quickly tell you about some cutting-edge developments in the composition and aging of the 2012 
Last year I wrote briefly about