Késsinnimek - Roots - Racines

Tourtière Time of Year
By Juliana L'Heureux

Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 20:42:28 -0500
From: "Juliana L'Heureux"
Subject: [Friends-L] Tourtiçre time of year
To: "'-Friends-L List'"

Tourtiere Time of Year

By Juliana L’Heureux

Christmas is tourtière time of year for Franco-Americans. tourtière, for the benefit of new readers of the Franco-American culture, is the traditional seasoned meat pie served during Les Fetes (Christmas and New Years) or anytime throughout the Holiday season. It’s the single most nostalgic icon of the Franco-American culture because it’s associated with history, heritage, family reunions, Saturday soirees and, most of all, with Réveillon celebrations on Christmas Eve. tourtière can be delicious, or not, depending on the ingredients used by the family cook. Nevertheless, tourtière is not about what’s in the pie’s interesting mixture of slow cooked meat and spices. Rather, Franco-Americans love eating tourtière because of the memories stirred by the aromas created while cooking the pie and the camaraderie enjoyed by eating them.

Christmas for many Franco-Americans of two generations ago was more about being with family than anything else. Christmas meant receiving only handmade items like mittens, hats and scarves created by the expert memeres and ma tantes who were amazing hand knitters. Each person in the family hung a sock out on Christmas Eve and these were filled with good things to eat like fruits, nuts and cookies. Sometimes a tree was cut from the forest, brought in and decorated with popcorn, paper chains, glass balls and even spools of thread. Christmas Eve was a time for breaking the traditional religious fast of the Advent Season. Therefore, it became customary to serve tourtière after attending Midnight Mass.

In those days, unlike today, Midnight Mass was celebrated on the stroke of midnight. Hungry revelers were delighted to eat tourtière at 2 am when they came home from Mass. Of course, tourtière really hit the spot when served with Holiday spirits. tourtière was also served with fiddle playing, dancing, jigging and singing to celebrate the birth of Christ while rejoicing with family and friends.

Réveillon celebrations continue to be cherished memories by multiple generations of Franco-American families, even if they’re not celebrated exactly on Christmas Eve anymore.

Practically every Franco-American family has a special tourtière recipe plus somebody who’s informally anointed as the expert at making them. In our family, Mike Frechette of Alfred gets the nod for making the best tourtière. He uses only lean pork in the meat mixture.

Other families use combinations of finely ground meat and pork, venison or other wild game.

Quite likely, I might have the world’s largest collection of tourtière recipes. People send their family recipes and I collect them in a book. I’ve re-entered my hard copy back-ups of the recipes each time I buy a new computer, because, unfortunately, I’ve lost three versions of the growing collection in nasty computer crashes. A version is now on line at www.MaineWriter.com.

These days, the best tourtière is probably made with lean pork seasoned with salt, pepper, a little fresh garlic, cinnamon and cloves to taste. This mixture is simmered with a little water for several hours on low heat until it become soft. Drain the meat mixture and adjust spices to taste again. Some people add mashed potato at this point thinking the starch helps hold the meat mixture together. Adding mashed potato or crumbled saltine crackers is optional. The mixture is poured into a nine inch pie shell, dotted with real butter, top crust attached and baked at 400 degrees for about 30-40 minutes or until brown.

tourtière is best served warm rather than piping hot. Don't forget to serve tourtière with a variety of relish side dishes like diced pickled beets, green tomato relish or ketchup. Joyeux Noel!

Juliana@MaineWriter.com
Juliana L'Heureux
e-mail: jrhappy@gwi.net
e-mail: Juliana@MaineWriter.com
website: www.MaineWriter.com

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Created 1 Feb 2003