The Bookless Club: Does tourtière feature in your holiday meals?

I’ll wager you’re having turkey for dinner on Dec. 25. I know I am, and I’m looking forward to it. Every Christmas, Canadians buy just under three million whole turkeys. Last year, 2.7 million birds went into the oven, which qualifies as 42 per cent of all the turkeys sold that year. This figure is slightly higher from the 2.1 million birds we carved up for Thanksgiving earlier in the year. Those two holidays make up the lion’s share of business for Canada’s 504 turkey farmers.

When you do the math on just how many people one big bird can feed, it’s not a long shot that most Canadians will enjoy a feast with turkey at the centre of it at some point over the holiday. It’s a meal that tends to cling to the tried-and-true: mashed potatoes with gravy, brussels sprouts, yams, and loads of cranberry sauce to complement the white meat and the dark. There may be some side dishes unique to your family, but the culinary essentials don’t vary much from table to table, year to year. Ahhh, tradition.

What people choose to eat on the days flanking Christmas, however, is a whole other story.

Poutine may call itself Canada’s national dish as well as Quebec’s unique offering to the culinary world, but before there were curds and gravy on chips, there was tourtière. Before poutine, when people thought of authentic Canadian cuisine, tourtière is what came to mind. Unlike poutine, this complex and savoury “tourte” is no culinary Johnny-come-lately. In fact, this historic recipe can trace its origins back to the 1600s. Tourtière has always been a dish for everyday meals, but also one that could be tarted up for special occasions, such as Christmas. For lots of Canadians, tourtière was — is — as much a part of Christmas as the big turkey dinner. It’s not just made and served in Quebec, but, over the holidays, you could count on finding it offered in homes all across Canada.

Tourtière is the simplest of dishes, involving a pie crust and a cooked, savoury meat blend, usually pork. And as much as it occupies a special place in festivities, there’s no one single recipe for making it.

My mom used to produce one tourtière every Christmas. As kids, we thought it was the absolutely worst possible incarnation of a pie — after all, if it wasn’t served with ice cream, what sort of pie was this? But, as it included allspice, cloves and cinnamon, I remember loving the way it smelled. My mom’s version would have probably included game, lots of chopped celery and onion, along with liberal doses of every possible spice in the tourtière playbook. There are plenty of recipes to be found, but the one I’d recommend is the one by Canada’s equivalent to Julia Child, Madame Jehane Benoît. The Canadian Museum of Immigration has her tourtière recipe online, but I’d recommend tarting up your tourte — we’re used to bolder flavours today. I’ll go heavy on the seasonings when I make mine. Some recipes include brandy and I figure I’ll add some of that, too — why not? It’s a party, right?

It wasn’t so long ago in Canada that tourtière on the holidays was as commonplace as candy canes and snow tires. In its most historic expression, tourtière was called révillion — awakening. It was the dish served while you waited up to see in the awakening of the new year, or what French-Canadian Catholics, returning from midnight mass, would tuck into when they returned home. There’s so much to recommend tourtière — it can be made in advance, you can eat it hot or cold, it can be made economically … not to mention that it’s absolutely, Canadianly delicious.

Jane Macdougall is a freelance writer and former National Post columnist who lives in Vancouver. She writes The Bookless Club every Saturday online and in The Vancouver Sun. For more of what Jane’s up to, check out her website, janemacdougall.com

This week’s question for readers:

Question: Does tourtière feature in your holiday meals?

Send your answers by email text, not an attachment, in 100 words or less, along with your full name to Jane at thebooklessclub@gmail.com. We will print some next week in this space.

Last week’s question for readers:

Question: Could manners and critical thinking become the new status symbol?

• I just took a photo of your column on the resurgence of civility (oops! Am I allowed to do that?) and sent it to my two daughters. They are polite (I hope!), but we all need a reminder. Thank you for making me laugh and think.

Gillian Elmitt

• People used to say “Excuse me” when walking directly in front of someone or between people having a conversation. I was at the supermarket and countless people (young and old) exhibited a complete lack of manners until one lady said the magic words, “Excuse me.” I reached out, touched her arm and said “Thank you”, and, sadly, she and I discussed the lack of what we think to be obvious manners.

Christina Yan-Lee

• I often wonder if parents are teaching their children anything at all about table manners today. These kids — talking with a mouth full of food, using a fork like a shovel, etc. — don’t realize that the business world will not let them advance if they behave like this. Manners matter. You can dress up all you like, the trashy truth will out.

Name withheld

• Have you noticed how much cellphones have affected posture? People look like hunched-over question marks. There used to be something called carriage and deportment, and it mattered. Carry yourself better, people. We’re becoming nothing but hungry hyenas.

Name withheld