It's taken me a few days to post this. My intention for Christmas Eve was to spend it doing as little as possible as the last few days weeks months have been absolutely brutal at work. However, like most of my plans lately, I failed miserably.
When I went down to my butcher to pick up the piece of turkey I ordered (haven't succeeded in cooking that either, it's in the freezer) I went in with no plan of what to eat for Christmas Eve dinner. The butcher was putting some pork through the mincer and I immediately thought of the French Canadian Christmas Eve tradition - tourtiere!
So I spent part of Christmas Eve cooking them (and frantically doing Christmas baking, which I failed miserably on this year). Tourtiere is pretty easy, but I kind of suck at any pastry, as this shows it.
The inside of a tourtiere is mostly mince pork. I asked for half a pound, thinking this would make me two small ones. I got a heck if a lot more than that!
So I fried half a pound of mince pork and a little bit of finely diced onion.
Traditionally, this calls for a lot of onion, but being a Chronie, I only used a little. If you want to really low-residue this, substitute with onion powder.
Add 1/4 tsp of cloves and 1/4 tsp ground black pepper.
Give it a stir and add 1/2 cup of water.
Cook until the meat is no longer pink. Then add about 1/4 cup of breadcrumbs to soak up some of the remaining liquid.
For the pastry, use shortcrust pasty. I suck at making pastry, so this came courtesy of Sainsbury's. Bring it to room temperature and unroll it. Cut to desired shape.
This is where I started to go wrong, as I figured I would do some triangle ones rather than a traditional pie shape. Someone remind my overtired brain that you need a square to make a triangle when working with pastry . . .
So, I ended up with some mini triangles and cut some squares for bigger ones. And some rectangles for squares. Bloody hell, this made more than I thought!
After spooning some meat onto the pastry, I brushed some beaten egg yolk on the edges of the pastry, folded it and pinched it to seal.
This is where things started to go wrong again. The kitchen had become too warm with baking and the edges if the pastry for too moist and they wouldn't stick! It took me a lot of tries, two different forms, fingers, then just folding the edges over (and losing filling along the way) to get them to seal. Sort of.
I put them in the fridge for a bit to solidify the pastry again, then took them out, brushed with the rest of the beaten egg yolk.
I cooked them for 10 minutes on 200C/400F, then turned the heat down to 180C/350F for 40 minutes.
They were nice and brown then. And decidedly stuck to the pan. Should have used parchment paper. After some wrangling and some course words, I had my Christmas Eve dinner.
I roasted some sweet potato wedges to go with it (peel and cut sweet potato, toss with a bit of oil, salt, pepper and thyme, bake alongside tourtiere).
I also had a lovely bottle of Sainsbury's Celebration Ale.
Good eating for Christmas Eve! And all the extrasgot devoured at friends' on Boxing Day!
When I went down to my butcher to pick up the piece of turkey I ordered (haven't succeeded in cooking that either, it's in the freezer) I went in with no plan of what to eat for Christmas Eve dinner. The butcher was putting some pork through the mincer and I immediately thought of the French Canadian Christmas Eve tradition - tourtiere!
So I spent part of Christmas Eve cooking them (and frantically doing Christmas baking, which I failed miserably on this year). Tourtiere is pretty easy, but I kind of suck at any pastry, as this shows it.
The inside of a tourtiere is mostly mince pork. I asked for half a pound, thinking this would make me two small ones. I got a heck if a lot more than that!
So I fried half a pound of mince pork and a little bit of finely diced onion.
Traditionally, this calls for a lot of onion, but being a Chronie, I only used a little. If you want to really low-residue this, substitute with onion powder.
Add 1/4 tsp of cloves and 1/4 tsp ground black pepper.
Give it a stir and add 1/2 cup of water.
Cook until the meat is no longer pink. Then add about 1/4 cup of breadcrumbs to soak up some of the remaining liquid.
For the pastry, use shortcrust pasty. I suck at making pastry, so this came courtesy of Sainsbury's. Bring it to room temperature and unroll it. Cut to desired shape.
This is where I started to go wrong, as I figured I would do some triangle ones rather than a traditional pie shape. Someone remind my overtired brain that you need a square to make a triangle when working with pastry . . .
So, I ended up with some mini triangles and cut some squares for bigger ones. And some rectangles for squares. Bloody hell, this made more than I thought!
After spooning some meat onto the pastry, I brushed some beaten egg yolk on the edges of the pastry, folded it and pinched it to seal.
This is where things started to go wrong again. The kitchen had become too warm with baking and the edges if the pastry for too moist and they wouldn't stick! It took me a lot of tries, two different forms, fingers, then just folding the edges over (and losing filling along the way) to get them to seal. Sort of.
 |
| Am I the only person who can screw up store bought pastry? |
I put them in the fridge for a bit to solidify the pastry again, then took them out, brushed with the rest of the beaten egg yolk.
 |
| This was only supposed to make two small ones, not two trays worth! |
I cooked them for 10 minutes on 200C/400F, then turned the heat down to 180C/350F for 40 minutes.
They were nice and brown then. And decidedly stuck to the pan. Should have used parchment paper. After some wrangling and some course words, I had my Christmas Eve dinner.
I roasted some sweet potato wedges to go with it (peel and cut sweet potato, toss with a bit of oil, salt, pepper and thyme, bake alongside tourtiere).
I also had a lovely bottle of Sainsbury's Celebration Ale.
 |
| Don't knock store brands, they can be really good! |
No comments:
Post a Comment