Hearty meals

A French Canadian Feast: Tourtiere and an Apple Brie Tartlet

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

As the weather gets more and more cold, I begin to crave the warm heartiness that only homemade meals can bring.  To celebrate the (partial) success of vegetarian week, I decided to make an appropriate follow up meal: tourtiere, the traditional French Canadian meat pie (or as I know it, the delicious meal that my mom always used to make in the depth of winter).  Last year my mom sent me home with a meat pie after Thanksgiving and that baby miraculously got consumed within half a week.

This is the perfect thing for students to make during exams/when they don’t have much time on their hands, since any leftovers (of which there are usually loads) can be smushed into a tupperware container and tossed in the freezer for a later day.  Also, I feel like meat pies are rather impressive, so if there is anyone special you’re serving this to then they’re sure to compliment your cooking skills.

Although my mom does have an actual recipe for this one, I decided to go out on an adventurous tangent and sort of improvise a recipe.  A few things I would have improved: add SALT!  I know, I know, everyone has a major issue with sodium these days, but lets face it, everything is better with a bit of salt.  Also, I forgot to add it completely, so even just a 1/2 tsp. added to the meat mixture would be awesome.  One more thing: Somehow find a way to mash up the ground pork.  Maybe this is just a neurotic Hilary thing, but I don’t like how ground meat retains its worm-like tube shape when cooking.  So maybe squish it around in a bowl with some spices?  I really don’t know…

Here is the recipe for the Hilary-style Tourtiere:

Pie crust (recipe adapted from my Better Homes and Garden cookbook)
*Note: this recipe makes enough pie pastry for a double-crust pie, which is what is required for my tourtiere.
– 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
– 1 teaspoon salt
– 1/2 cup shortening
– 1/4 cup butter, cut up
– 2/3 cup ice water
In a large bowl whisk together flour and salt.  Using two steak knives (or a pastry blender if you’re grown up and have one of those), cut in the shortening and butter until pieces are pea sized.  Gradually add water to the mixture, tossing the dough around with a fork with each addition.  Once flour mixture is moistened, gather dough with hands and knead it on a floured surface.  Divide pastry in half, forming halves into balls.  Roll the pastry balls into circles with a 12-inch diameter and carefully transfer pastry into a nine inch pie pan.  Add filling (see recipe below) and place the other half of the dough over top, sealing the edges by pressing them closed with a fork.  Cut any desired slits into the top of the pie with a knife.

Tourtiere filling
– 600 grams ground pork
– 1 potato, grated
– 1 onion, chopped
– 3 cloves of garlic, chopped
– 3/4 teaspoon nutmeg
– 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary
– 1/2 teaspoon salt
– 1/2 teaspoon pepper

In a non stick pan, fry ground pork until no longer pink.  Transfer to plate and keep warm.  In the same pan, fry onion, garlic, nutmeg, rosemary, salt and pepper.  Once onion is softened, add pork back into pan, combining the ingredients and cooking until warm (about four minutes).  Scoop filling into prepared pie pan and place other half of dough over top of filling.  Cook at 375° for about 45 minutes or until pie crust is golden brown.  Optional: five minutes before the pie is finished, take it out of the oven and brush top with egg white to add a glossy shine.

Note: the cooking temperature and time really depends on your oven.  Since our oven is possessed by the devil, I only had to cook my meat pie at 275° for 30 minutes.  Just keep an eye on it!

ALSO: this may be the best part of this entire post.  Because I had a bit of pie crust left over, I decided to make an apple brie tartlet!  I bought a huge chunk of brie earlier in the week, and quickly inhaled half of it while my meat pie was in the oven.  Since I was fully committed to eating this entire wheel of cheese in one day, I decided to chop up the remaining half and toss it in my pie crust with a diced apple.  Bake until brie is melted at about 200°.  ENJOY!  The two pictures below are literally the only things you need to do to make this AMAZING snack.  God I love brie.

And the finished product…

In the end, this turned out to be my biggest fat day ever (not that I mind).  Throughout the day, I ate an entire block of brie, two pieces of meat pie, part of my roommate Natalie’s lunch, a super chocolate-y hot chocolate and WAY more.  Needless to say I did yoga that night to calm my inner mind (and stomach).

Ratatouille with Pesto Crumble

~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

I’m baaaaaaaaaack!  Two week hiatus?  Officially over.

This ratatouille was good enough to almost convert me to vegetarianism.  Get this: the only thing in this dish was zucchini, tomatoes, red pepper, eggplant, onion, and feta cheese (Mmmmm).  I hope you’re impressed mom.  Considering I haven’t had time to really eat anything in the past week, this ratatouille was a wonderful vacation away from the occasional bowl of Cheerios and leftovers to which I have lately become accustomed.  For anyone wanting a cheap and easy winter meal, this is the recipe for you.

Ahh, but of course there is an inspiration behind this meal…

I’ve been wanting to make this recipe ever since watching the animated movie Ratatouille a few weeks ago.  For anyone who hasn’t seen the film, it is the adorable tale of Remy the rat, a culinary connoisseur living in Paris.  Throughout the movie Remy, and his helpless-in-the-kitchen human friend Alfredo, dazzle the kitchen of a French restaurant.  At the end of the movie, Remy and Alfredo make ratatouille and melt the heart of a stone cold food critic.  Probably my favourite animated movie ever.  The clip below is from when Ego (the appropriately named food critic) is served Remy’s final dish.  Also, don’t you just love how perfect everything looks in Pixar movies?  Vegetables without a single blemish, the cutest little people, and bubbling soups that look like lava.

Also notable: this is my first time EVER trying eggplant.  Prior to this meal, I only knew it as that fairly attractive purple squash-shaped thing that sat atop the zucchini section.  Now I know it as a spongy piece of heaven with a chewy consistency.  Quite a wonderful discovery if I do say so myself.

PS: Feta is the most delicious thing in the universe.
PPS: I wasn’t sure how this pesto crumble thing would turn out, but the basil complimented the flavours of the vegetables and added a nice texture to the whole thing.  Good call Canadian Living.

Beef and Bean Chili in a Bread Bowl

~ Hilary ~ 1 Comment

I’m one of those people who can vividly remember several moments from her childhood.  While most of these memories often just swim around in the archives of my brain waiting to give me a major shot of déjà vu when I’m least expecting it, some of them sit in a more fond spot.  Perhaps in the more exclusive brain archives section – the “Reserve” section, if you may…

Here is one of those memories: When I was young and living in Timmins, my dad and I always used to go out to Tim Hortons.  These trips came pretty often, since my dad was a huge fan of Timmie’s coffee (things have changed since we got our new coffee maker at home) and I always insisted on coming along in hopes of getting a doughnut.  Some of my fondest memories of these little Tim Hortons trips came when the shop was having its “chili in a bread bowl” promotion.  My dad and I would absolutely lose our minds for this.  I think I ate a record-breaking amount of chili when I was young, simply because I loved the combination of crusty bread and mouthwatering chili so much.  Anyways, for some reason Timmie’s stopped having this chili in a bread bowl promotion and the chili has since never tasted as good.  Mom, you get a lot of shout outs on this blog but dad, this one is for you.

Feeling nostalgic and craving chili, I knew that this was a completely necessary meal to make.  The recipe I used was pretty traditional in the chili sense, and came from Canadian Living.  The title they used for the chili had the words “really good” in it, so I figured I would give them the benefit of the doubt and whip myself up a batch.  Ugggghhhh, as I type I am so full of delicious chili that all I want to do is hibernate for the whole winter through.  This recipe was great, since the only thing I needed to buy at the grocery store was crushed tomatoes.  Don’t you just love having all the other ingredients on hand?  I even got to use up most of my pesky stalk of celery, a vegetable which looks cute slopped with peanut butter and raisins, but unfortunately lacks taste unless combined in something so delicious as this chili.  Since the recipe doesn’t call for too much celery and carrots, I just tripled the amount that they requested, to make a meal that was just as healthy as it was hearty.  I also added way more hot pepper sauce than requested, for an extra spicy kick.

Although the recipe says it only makes four servings, I discovered it made around six.  With these leftovers as well as leftover stew, I will guaranteed never go hungry again.  Such a shame since I want to try out a ratatouille recipe soon…

Homemade Beef Stew

~ Hilary ~ 8 Comments

Hello everyone, remember me?  I know, its been awhile.  No, my blog is not dying, so for all you shaking your head’s out there, stop it right now!!  Rather, I’ve just been really busy with classes and such.  I had two huge assignments due today and yesterday, and we’ve now started newsroom days for radio, which complicate things a tad more

But enough with my complaints!  Lets get on to what you actually want to read about…

Okay, so at this point I’ve finally accepted that the cold fall weather is here to stay.  Ever since the Halloween blizzard, it’s like some signal went off in my brain making me crave only two things: chili and stew.  Not having made anything decently healthy for awhile, I thought making my mom’s homemade recipe for the latter would be a great way to get my protein and veggie intake.  A more important factor contributing to this decision was that I forgot my grocery list when I went to the store (never a good mistake), and stew is a very good improvisation “I don’t know what the hell I’m buying” dish.

My dear roommate Brittany also coincidentally decided to make stew last night.  Bubbling away on the stove, our stews brewed and sizzled – creating a symphony of smells in our cramped kitchen.  Though the cooking time on a recipe like this is rather long (see instructions below, don’t plan on making this in a rush!), it turned out to be worth it in the end.  My improvised recipe ended up making five servings of warmth and love.  It pains me a bit to type this post, since I’ve now had stew for two meals in a row and am kind of sick of the thing.  Perhaps I’ll move on to chili next and leave my leftovers in the freezer for a bit…

Cute little freezer leftovers

Homemade Beef Stew
– 2 tablespoons olive oil
– 500 g stewing beef (basically beef cut up in squares at the grocery store, it’s amazingly cheap)
– 1 onion, chopped
– 2 cups beef broth, water or a combination of the two
– 4 carrots, sliced
– 2 large potatoes, diced
– 1/4 cabbage, chopped
– 1 zucchini, sliced
– 1 teaspoon dried thyme

The instructions for this one are pretty simple: fry meat with oil until brown.  Once browned, add onion and pour 1 cup of the liquid over the meat.  Bring to boil and let sit simmering for 45 minutes, or until beef is tender.  Add carrots, potatoes, cabbage and remainder of liquid. Let cook for 20-30 minutes.  Within the last 5 minutes of cooking, add zucchini.  Sprinkle with thyme and serve.  Enjoy!

Chicken Chorizo Paella

~ Hilary ~ Leave a comment

I am embarrassed to admit that it took me two solid days to learn how to say “chorizo.”  I know what you’re thinking: “Hilary is so stupid, it’s pronounced exactly how it sounds!”  This is a valid point.  I compare my difficulties with chorizo to the full week it took me to pronounce and spell Milla Jovovich’s name.  She is the actress who plays Alice in Resident Evil, and also the female I have the biggest girl crush on.  Regardless of my zombie-killing admiration towards her, I insisted on spelling and saying her name like this: Jokovich.  This error caused my roommate Brittany, another huge Milla fan, to sigh in irritation.  However, just as in chorizo, I finally learned.  This is why radio scripts have pronunciations, my friends.

Alright, so that was a little off topic…

This Chicken Chorizo Paella recipe was from the November issue of Canadian Living.  To be honest, I was actually a little disappointed in this one.  The flavours were very similar to that of the squash risotto I made a few weeks ago (to be fair both recipes did use white wine, arborio rice and chicken broth).  Also, I’m not 100 per cent sure I like chorizo.  After all the trouble I spent learning how to pronounce the damn thing, you think it would be super tasty, right?  Unfortunately it left some sort of cross between pepperoni and kielbasa taste in my mouth, a flavour to which I would rather have been unexposed.  The consistency of the rice was good, and I controlled my irrational desire to add more than the required cup, a restraint which I wish I had when I made my soup a few weeks ago.  I am confident in saying that this dish would have been way better with just the chicken, but that’s just me.

Also, this recipe represents the first time I’ve actually bought wine to add in to a dish.  I stole some of my roommate’s before (sorry Alex if you’re reading this, it was only 1/4 cup I swear!) and decided it was finally time to invest in my own bottle.  The bottle is now sitting staring at me from atop my dresser, begging me to use it again.  We’ll see.

Hmmm, now what do I do with the other half of my chorizo…