Hello, Neighbor!
This month we’re going savory with a recipe for Good-Neighbor Pie! And who is this good neighbor you ask? That would be America’s northern neighbor, Canada! According to the Farm Journal Pie Cookbook, the recipe for this pie hales from Vermont, and is a take on the French-Canadian classic—Tourtière.
Tourtière is a pork pie commonly seasoned with warm spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, and allspice. It’s a favorite in my husband’s family. His grandmother often makes tourtière for Christmas Eve dinner, and serves it with a sweet and tangy fruit relish. I’ve never made a meat pie before and I’ve been dying to try it. So this year it’s going to be Christmas in August! Let’s get baking!
Baking Up Memories
As I baked this pie, the summer song of the cicadas and smell of pork sizzling in my sauté pan reminded me of the many picnics I used to go on with my grandparents. In the hottest months of the year, we would pack paper bags full of gummy bears and deviled ham and mustard sandwiches. In the park, we’d find a quiet copse of trees and spread out our blanket in shade. While we ate, my grandmother told stories about the bears that lived in the woods.
“Be very quiet,” she’d say, “Can you hear them?…”
I’d lean in, heart racing, listening.
Of course, there weren’t any bears in the park, but the idea thrilled me nonetheless. There were other wild critters we encountered—real ones. My grandmother and I used to stay up late at night with all the lights off, peering out the window into the backyard. Two opossums lived nearby, and we’d wait for them to trundle through the backyard, their eyes catching slivers of light and flashing them back at us.
Then there was the time my grandmother befriended a squirrel with a stubby tail. It used to skitter onto their front porch and takes peanuts from her hand.
Even my grandfather, until he died, used to go out into the backyard every day and sprinkle seeds for the birds and the chipmunks to nibble on.
The Result
Farm Journal’s Good-Neighbor Pie makes quite a few changes to the tourtière my husband grew up loving. This recipe uses a combination of ground pork and ground beef, and in addition to garlic and onion, this recipe calls for chopped celery. The warm spices that make tourtière the perfect Christmas-time meal are absent from Good-Neighbor Pie. In fact, to my surprise, the recipe didn’t use ANY other herbs or spices.
Now, I respect the Farm Journal Pie Cookbook, but I have to admit this recipe looked pretty bland. So I decided to take some creative license with the seasoning.
After browning the ground meat, I added fresh thyme, rosemary, and parsley to the filling. Next, the recipe called for beef bouillon and 3/4 cup of water. Since I already got creative with the herbs, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to make one more change. In place of the water, I added white wine—because why not?!
I’m proud to say, the end result was delicious! The addition of the thyme, rosemary, parsley, and wine gave this filling the cozy flavor you find in Thanksgiving stuffing. I’m also so proud of the decoration for this pie. I love how the heart turned out, and the ring of dough-pearls circling the inside. It looks like something out of a storybook! Both cute and tasty! The kind of thing one might even share with a few bears on a picnic in the park.
