I embarked on recreating the Cajun Tourtière after learning that this traditional dish vanished many decades ago.
When our daughter Sophia settled in New Orleans, I became interested in learning about Christmas traditions brought to French-ruled Louisiana by Acadian emigres after their expulsion by the British from Nova Scotia in the 18th century. Those French-speaking settlers, now known as Cajun, were welcomed by the local French population and settled in swamps and prairies of southern Louisiana, fishing, trapping and farming to survive. Other French settlers –- government administrators, traders and religious orders — came directly from France to populate France’s Louisiana colony, settling in New Orleans. Eventually, these urban French emigres, now known as Creole, intermarried with Cajuns, Africans, Spanish, Native Americans and other immigrants, sharing cultural ties and customs, use of French, Spanish and local Creole language and Catholicism.
One Christmas tradition celebrated by both the Cajun and Creole communities was Le Réveillon (based on the French word réveil meaning awakening), a middle-of-the-night Christmas feast eaten after Midnight Mass. This meal, rooted in French holiday tradition, ritually commemorates breaking the all-day Christmas Eve fast then prescribed by the Catholic Church.
For several centuries French-speaking families prepared a Réveillon spread of favorite dishes such as oyster stew or turtle soup, assorted gumbos, soufflés or other egg dishes, crawfish etouffee, ham, turkey, grillades of veal, desserts like sweet pies, bûche de Noël or croquembouche, wine, brandy, cordials and other fortified drinks and at the end coffee.
But the highlight of the meal among Cajun and Creole families alike was a tourtière, a meat pie usually made with finely diced pork and other meats, vegetables, potatoes and spices. There was no correct tourtière filling but recipes were closely guarded by family cooks and differences between fillings reflected what was regionally available.
Canadian Tourtière
As happens with most immigrant groups, traditions wane over centuries. Cajun and Creole holiday traditions were not written for the most part but were passed orally from cooks of one generation to those of the next. One recent visitor to a French-Canadian blog wrote: I am a Cajun from Louisiana and we love to eat meat pies also. We have always kept with our Canadian-French traditions. When my grandmother passed away, the recipes passed also. Each subsequent generation adapted the traditions to a new era and, often lacking knowledge of the heritage and reason behind certain traditions, continued some traditions and abandoned others.
Post-World War II baby boomers were probably the last generation who as children may have experienced various holiday traditions similar to those brought from Nova Scotia or France. The Réveillon and the tourtière traditions were alive in homes until the 1940s when they became extinct with the passage of the prior generation and with the next generation’s adoption of American holiday practices. A Réveillon revival and rebirth of the tourtière promoted by New Orleans restauranteurs in the 1990s met with mixed success. Although a few restaurants still offer a Réveillon menu in December today, the tourtière vanished from restaurant menus.
The mystery of the vanished Cajun Tourtière intrigued me, so I searched for Louisiana tourtière recipes online under various search terms and spellings (tourtière, tortiere, pâté á la viande, pork pie and meat pie), contacted New Orleans chefs who were part of the 1990s revival, other prominent Cajun chefs and home cooks for Cajun and Creole tourtière or meat pie recipes without success.
The only Cajun meat pie recipe I found was for Natchitoches (pronounced nack-uk-tush) Meat Pie with a pork and beef filling comparable to the French-Canadian tourtière but with the addition of the Cajun trinity of onions, green peppers, celery and cayenne. This meat pie, a popular regional street food, is a fried half-moon-shaped pastry. Louisiana historian Dale Sauter* suggests that when Spain ruled the region from 1763-1802, the French-Canadian tourtière brought to Natchitoches by the Acadian settlers morphed under influence of Spanish cooks into a hand-held meat pie, retaining the tourtière filling and adapted to local ingredients but with an empanada shape.
Natchitoches Meat Pie
I had better luck with a recipe for a Tourtière Creole** from New Orleans Chef Daniel Causgrove. His recipe has the hallmarks of sophisticated, urban Creole cooking with the pork filling enhanced with white wine, chicken or pork stock, mint, sage, Italian parsley, scallions, oysters encased in puff pastry. But this fancy recipe is far from the simple recipe brought to Louisiana by the Acadians three centuries ago.
Bloggers of a certain age and home cooks recall a Cajun Tourtière, lovingly prepared by their great-grandmothers and grandmothers and served on the Réveillon table, regretting its loss. As children, some remember watching older cooks cube the combination of meats, recalling the labor-intensive preparation in pre-meat grinder days. Others recall the sweet aroma of cinnamon permeating the kitchen when the tourtière was baking. Still, others remember summer savory as the dominant taste. Some recall liking the pie and remember its prominent place on the Réveillon table, bringing family and friends together for this yearly celebration.
How to make a Cajun Tourtière?
To recreate a Cajun Tourtiére, I returned to the source of this Franco-American meat pie. The tourtière dates to Acadian life in French settlements in Nova Scotia before Canada became a country. Its lineage is likely based on French pâté en croûte where a mixture of ground meat seasoned with a spice mixture is baked in a crust. In reconstructing a recipe for Cajun Tourtiére, I came to the following conclusions:
First, the Cajun Tourtière’s crust was a simple lard-based pastry. The late Cajun Chef Paul Prudhomme once said that to find the roots of Cajun cooking with French similarities one had to go to the country, southwest Louisiana’s land of boucherie, where French-Canadians settled in the mid-1700s and where hogs were slaughtered in the fall and preserved for the winter. Since early cows produced little milk and butter was scarce, lard was the fat Cajuns used daily. A simple dough of lard, all-purpose flour salt and water produces the flakiest, most savory tourtière. This pastry can be made in advance and kept in a refrigerator for several days until ready to use.
Second, since the Cajun Tourtière was a holiday dish, the filling was made of good quality pork but, if available, with an addition of beef or veal, venison, pheasant, rabbit or turkey to enrich the pie’s flavor. The meats were chopped or ground to various textures with a simple roux enveloping and binding the filling ingredients.
Third, as the Acadians relocated from frosty Nova Scotia to the subtropical climate of southern Louisiana, they quickly adapted their cooking to available bountiful natural resources, experimenting with local ingredients, herbs and spices. They enhanced the warm spicing of traditional Acadian dishes (cinnamon, clove, allspice and nutmeg) with the Cajun trinity, garlic, cayenne or red pepper, creating new flavor combinations. Thus, a bold use of seasonings produced a well-spiced, savory Cajun Tourtière, but not overwhelmingly hot.
Fourth, since the finished Cajun Tourtière was the centerpiece of the Rèveillion table, it was decorated with leftover scraps of dough or cutouts, glazed with egg wash and baked to a golden hue.
Finally, the Cajun Tourtière was served with a tart-flavored relish to balance the richness of the savory pie. A ketchup vert, cranberry relish or any other sweet and sour sauce, chili sauce, mustard, pickled beets, chow-chow or quick-pickled vegetables would be great complements.
The discrete components of this Cajun Tourtière are easy to make. The crust, filling and condiments can be prepared up to several days in advance with readily available ingredients. The tourtière can be assembled and frozen for baking on another day. But whenever it is baked, it is a celebratory dish with its savory spiced meat filling and ethereally flaky crust. It makes a great main dish or starter, perfect on any winter’s night but especially on the Christmas table. I served this Cajun Tourtière as a room temperature appetizer with bowls of a sweet and sour green tomato ketchup and a fruity apple cranberry chutney (recipes below).
I can’t say that this Cajun Tourtière is a precise recreation of the original dish prepared by the Acadian settlers, but it merges traditional French-Canadian ingredients with Cajun adaptations producing a flavorful holiday pie that honors the culinary legacy of both. It will have to do for now, but I am still looking for a Cajun family’s tourtière recipe. Please share if you have one.
Cajun Tourtière
For the pastry:
3 cups (408 g) unbleached all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons kosher salt
9 ounces (255 g) cup lard, cold
9 to 11 tablespoons ice-cold water
For the filling:
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 bell pepper, finely chopped
1 stalk celery, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced 1 cooked large red potato, diced small
1 pound (454 g) ground pork
1 pound (454 g) ground beef, with 20% fat
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
⅜ teaspoon ground cloves
¾ teaspoon summer savory
¾ teaspoon ground cinnamon
⅛ teaspoon plus a pinch grated nutmeg
¾ teaspoon cayenne pepper
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
½ cup (118 ml) beef stock
½ cup (118 ml) potato water
2 tablespoons parsley, finely chopped
For pastry glaze:
1 egg
2 tablespoons water coarse salt
Preparing the pastry: Whisk flour and salt together in a large bowl. Cut in lard with pastry blender or 2 knives until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Blending dry ingredients with lard
Sprinkle ice water one tablespoon at a time, blending with two forks just until the dough just comes together and almost cleans the sides of the bowl, but do not overwork it. If the dough is dry, sprinkle another tablespoon of water. Divide the dough in half and shape it into a ball, flatten, wrap, and chill in the refrigerator for at least one hour. (Dough can be made ahead and refrigerated for up to three days or frozen up to three months.) While the pastry is chilling, prepare the filling.
Preparing the filling: Peel and cut potatoes into 2-inch chunks, place in a medium saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce heat to medium-high and cook until the potatoes are tender about 12 minutes. Reserve ½ cup (118 ml) of potato cooking water and drain the rest. Cool. Then cut the potatoes into ¼ inch (0.6 cm) dice and set them aside.
Add 2 tablespoons of oil to large skillet. Brown the pork and beef meat thoroughly over medium heat, breaking up the meat with a wooden spoon. Remove meat from skillet with a slotted spoon to a bowl, draining all but 2 tablespoons of fat. Reserve any meat juices separately.
Browning meat
In the same skillet, add 1 tablespoon of oil and sautè onions until transparent and add green peppers and celery, cooking for a few minutes. Add garlic and cook another minute more. Stir in diced potatoes. Remove vegetables to a bowl and set aside.
Add 3 tablespoons of oil to the same skillet. Stir in flour and cook until medium brown in color. Whisk in beef broth, potato water, meat juices, spices and salt and plenty of black pepper, to taste. Cook for 1 minute, stirring, until mixture thickens, then add browned meat and vegetables to skillet. Mix well and simmer gently, stirring often, until the meat is coated with thick sauce, perhaps 10 to 15 minutes. Remove skillet from heat and cool filling completely. Taste and adjust seasonings. Stir in parsley. Transfer filling to a clean bowl. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
Completing the filling with spices and vegetables
Assembling and baking pie: Position rack in the bottom of the oven. Preheat oven to 400°F(205°C).
Remove filling from the refrigerator, skim off accumulated fat, if any, and keep cold. Remove dough from refrigerator 15 minutes before rolling out.
Make an egg wash by beating the egg with 1 tablespoon of water in a small bowl. Set aside.
On a lightly floured surface, roll dough to about 13-inches (33 cm) in diameter, a scant ¼ -inch (0.6 cm) thick, to fit a 9-inch (23 cm) pie pan. Reserve dough scraps for decorating the pie. Gently transfer and ease the dough into the pie plate, letting excess hang over the edge. Refrigerate for 20 minutes. Add cold filling to the pie shell, spreading evenly and pressing to fill in gaps.
Assembling the tourtière
Roll out the top pastry and drape over the filling. Trim the overhanging dough to ½ inch (1.3 cm) beyond the edge of the pie plate. Fold the top crust under the bottom crust around the rim and pinch or flute the edges. Chill the pie for 1 hour or freeze it for 15 minutes.
When ready to bake, paint egg wash over pie, make decorative marks with a sharp knife, attach pastry decorations, if using, and cut vent hole. Sprinkle with coarse salt. Refrigerate pie for 15 minutes.
Bake pie on a baking sheet for 40 to 50 minutes or until the pastry is golden brown and the filling is bubbling. Cover with foil after 25 minutes, if browning too quickly. Remove tourtière from the oven and cool to room temperature. Then, refrigerate for several hours or overnight so the filling firms up. Bring to room temperature for serving. Leftovers should be wrapped, refrigerated and consumed within 3 days or frozen tightly wrapped.
Serves 8 for a main course and 16 as a starter.
Suggested condiments —
Ketchup vert – Chunky Green Tomato Ketchup
This Ketchup can be served chunky as cooked or puréed to a smooth texture.
2 tablespoons yellow mustard seed
1 tablespoon allspice seed
2 teaspoons coriander seed
1 teaspoon pepper flakes
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 bay leaves
2 cinnamon sticks, broken in half
6 whole cloves
¼ teaspoon (1.4 ml) fennel seed
1 cup (250 ml) cider vinegar
1 cup (250 ml) sugar
1 teaspoon (5 ml) salt
¼ teaspoon (1.4 ml) ground black pepper
4 cups (1 l) green tomatoes, chopped
1½ stalks celery, diced
2 small Granny Smith apples, peeled and diced
1 white onion, chopped
Wrap the marinating spices in two layers of cheesecloth. Tie the cheesecloth with baking twine. Alternatively, place spices into a steel 4-inch tea infuser.
In a large saucepan, combine the apple cider vinegar with the sugar, salt and pepper. Add the marinating spices. Bring to a boil, then cook for 5 to 7 minutes over low heat.
Add remaining ingredients to the pot and stir. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 1 hour over low heat, stirring several times during cooking. Remove and discard the marinating spices.
Transfer ketchup to sterilized jars. Seal tight. Cool in the refrigerator before serving.
Ketchup will retain flavor in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks or frozen for up to six months.
Makes 3½ cups (250 ml) each.
Apple Cranberry Chutney
1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries
½ cup chopped onion
¼ cup cider vinegar
½ cup of brown sugar
1 tablespoon orange zest
1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
1½ teaspoons cinnamon
Small pinch of ground clove
Put all ingredients into a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil, reduce to a low simmer. Cover and cook for 20 minutes. Uncover and cook for a few minutes more, to reduce any remaining liquid. Refrigerate up to 2 weeks.
Makes 2 cups.
* https://daily.jstor.org/delicious-meat-pies-put-natchitoches-map/
**Tourtière Creole — https://www.wwltv.com/article/life/food/recipes/12-days-of-reveillon-the-grill-room-at-windsor-court/412233244
Photo Credits: Louisiana Cookin’ magazine, www.louisianacookin.com/-– Oyster Soup; Broiled Oysters; Turtle Soup; Shrimp & Okra Gumbo; Grillades & Grits; Crawfish Etoufee; Cajun Turkey; Satsuma-glazed Ham; Bread Pudding; Pumpkin Tart; Croquembuche; and, Natchitoches Meat Pie. Dreamstime, https://www.dreamstime.com/ — Canadian Tourtière, photo 191555616, Liudmyla Chihunova; Bûche de Noël, photo 22309202, Laperla777. All other photos in this blog were taken by Slava Johnson.
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Two years ago: http://www.kitchenepiphanies.com/orange-christmas-cake-white-chocolate-frosting/
Three years ago: http://www.kitchenepiphanies.com/starlight-sugar-crisps/
Four years ago: http://www.kitchenepiphanies.com/rediscovering-holiday-walnut-cookies/
Five years ago: http://www.kitchenepiphanies.com/discovering-perus-foodways-part-one/
Six years ago: http://www.kitchenepiphanies.com/a-chocolate-indulgence-steamed-chocolate-pudding/
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