One of my favorite dishes is tourtière. Tourtière is a meat potato pie originating from Québec, Canada. My version is adapted from the Canadian Living Baking Book. I use sweet potatoes, white wine, ground beef, and my recipe for Perfect Flaky Pastry. Here are the ingredients I used:
- 2 pounds ground beef (My mum bought this when I was away visiting my friends. She forgot to bring the Lunchbot container with her, so they used the normal disposable packaging. Oh well.)
- 2 cups cubed peeled sweet potatoes
- 2 onions, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp pepper
- 1/4 tsp ground cloves (My cloves are in a plastic bottle, but that’s because I bought them before I became aware of the plastic problem. When I run out I’ll buy cloves in a glass bottle instead.)
- 1 1/2 cups liquid (You can use reserved cooking liquid from the potatoes, vegetable broth, wine, or just plain water. I used a combination of homemade vegetable broth and white wine.)
- 1 recipe Perfect Flaky Pastry
Bring a pot of water to a boil. Add sweet potatoes and cook until tender.
Drain the potatoes and mash them. Don’t forget to reserve the cooking liquid if you decide to use it.
Meanwhile, cook beef in a skillet over medium-high heat until evenly browned, and no pink remains.
Add onions, garlic, cloves, salt and pepper.
Stir and cook for ten minutes.
Add liquid. Bring to a boil.
Cook for 25-30 minutes, or until a spoon pulled across the bottom of the pan leaves a space that fills in slowly with liquid.
Add mashed potatoes, and stir until combined.
(Oops, that one is a little blurry.) Add mixture to prepared pie shell.
Roll out other half of dough, fold in half, and make slits with a sharp knife.
Place on top of pie, trim edges and widen slits with a knife if necessary.
Bake at 400 degrees for 50 minutes, or until crust is golden.
Enjoy! Traditionally this pie is served on Christmas Eve, but I ate it on Boxing Day because I’m weird like that.
