Murielle’s Tourtière du Lac-Saint-Jean

Riding my way toward the province of Quebec, I was both excited and apprehensive. Up to this point, I was more or less able to talk my way into the kitchens of locals to make a personal connection on the topic of food and culture; not easy, but not impossible. Quebec, however, was going to be another layer of complexity.

Fascinated by the rich Quebecois history and remarkable foods, I was well aware that beyond Montreal and Quebec City, English speakers—or those willing to speak English—would be few and far between. As an Anglophone eager to immerse myself in Quebecois culture, I knew it would be nearly impossible to navigate conversations, let alone gain access to someone’s kitchen and fully comprehend the information being shared with me.

Then, by some stroke of dirty biker luck, my wife's cousin Jay Turnbull, who happens to work with CBC Canada in Montreal, heard what I was up to. He put me in touch with Sonali Karnick, the host of CBC’s radio program, “All In A Weekend”, that airs all across Quebec. On air, Sonali led me to one of the province's more controversial dishes – The Tourtière.

The tourtière in Quebec is presented in a few traditional forms with endless recipe variations. First and most recognizable is the classic Tourtière, a specialty found throughout most of Quebec. It’s made with a thin crust typically in a pie-sized dish filled with ground beef and is often served with ketchup. Then there is the Cipaille or Sea-pie, found mainly in the Gaspésie region and known by various spellings and recipes. Some recipes call for layers of dough (six being the most popular), and others note that there should be layers of meat, not layers of dough. Lastly, there is the Tourtière du Lac-Saint-Jean, found in the Saguenay Lac-Saint-Jean region. This, the largest of the tourtières, is typically made in a roasting pan, with a thick crust filled with wild meats and potatoes. This party-sized wild game wonder was to become my source of inspiration for this leg of the expedition.

Naturally, each region thinks their version is the correct version and each wants to lay claim to the dish as being the most culturally significant to the province. Naturally, I’ll be expecting a long list of hate mail from everyone who disagrees with my experience in order to defend their tourtières' historical significance 🙂

The history of the tourtière can go back as far as you’re willing to look. Some think the name comes from the Tourte Voyageuse, a now extinct pigeon whose meat was once used in the dish. Others are certain it came from one of the oldest cookbooks known – Liber de Coquina, published in the 13th-14th century that references a six-layer dish called Torta Parmigiana. And then there’s the group convinced it is derived from the Sea-Pie. The layered meat pie eaten by sailors and found in the first known American cookbook, American Cookery, published in 1796. 

    While the historians argue amongst themselves, I headed to Lac-Saint-Jean to get my hands on a traditional tourtière, Saguenay style.

The timing was perfect, and after picking up Angie at the airport in Ottawa a week earlier and touring around Quebec we were headed to Lac-St-Jean with her cousin Jay. Jay was so concerned about ensuring I found an authentic tourtière that he packed up his family and friends, and the lot of us drove five hours to get to Lac-St-Jean. Along with the family was a colorful guy named Normand St-Pierre. Normand set a record in 1998 after spending 24-hours a day for a total of 672 hours and 59 minutes – just shy of a month – riding the Monstre Roller Coaster in Montreal to raise funds for a children's foundation. He said one of the hardest parts was sleeping in his own bed after it was all over. Normand actually had to go back to the coaster to get some sleep for a few days afterward to acclimatize to his own bed, a bed that didn’t move.

Lac-Saint-Jean is a food-filled paradise and touring around led us to various farms, including a blueberry farm and later a haskap or camerise farm. The haskap looks like a cylindrical version of a blueberry of a similar shade, but that’s where the similarities end. On site at Camerises Mistouk the farmer explained via Chantal, Alyssa and or Jay translating, that he was looking for something new to bring to the province, and after a meeting with the minister of agriculture years earlier, they decided on the haskap. The cooler climate here was perfect for the fruit. Today, they are the largest producers of haskap in Quebec. On site they also produce jams, candies, butter, fresh berries, and my favorite - the Camerise Ice Yogurt!    
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Adding to the list of incredible edible experiences in the area, just across the lake is the holy home of the chocolate monks: La Chocolaterie des Pères Trappistes de Mistassini. A group of monks with a 125-year history who continue to carry on a tradition of farming and chocolate making today. On site they craft an array of delights, from chocolate covered cranberries to novel items like the little chocolate squirrel and the gigantic 26” chocolate rabbit! After filling up on chocolate and chatting with the monks, we set off for a local lesson on tourtière.

Greeted with a double cheek kiss, we enter the quaint home of Murielle Cauchon at the edge of the tranquil shores of stunning Lac Saint-Jean. A delightful grandmother type with six children, fifteen grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren, I’m already feeling confident that she knows how to feed a crowd. 

Near the entrance, an untimely photo of her in a cap and gown hangs on the wall. I break the ice by asking what this photo was for. After quitting school in grade ten, Murielle returned shortly before turning sixty to get her high school diploma! I get the feeling that there isn’t much this woman is afraid of, and teaching some food-punk from the west how to cook on camera is just going to be another day at the office.

    This tourtière has a two-day preparation. Today we are working on the crust and ingredients, and we’ll return tomorrow morning for assembly – then back that evening for an extended family feast. I’m fortunate to have two translators with me, Jay's daughter Alyssa, and her friend Alison.

Since our arrival, Muriel’s been tossing in the odd English word here and there to emphasize she’s trying to make my life easier. She says thank you occasionally, and yes, and correct, and basically tries to use her limited English to reflect my similar use of about seven French words I know. She then goes on to explain that her recipe is traditionally made with bear, beaver, caribou, deer, Canadian geese, hare, and mouse.

 Then I get a funny look on my face, and so do my teenage translators. Then she says it again, but with a question mark at the end mouse? Then she laughs, no, no, no mouse, MOOSE! We all start laughing. Many, many times I have confidently explained what I wanted in another language only to get a giggle from the local who explains I’ve mixed up one word or the other.

After clearing that up, Muriel explains that typically, her tourtière can have all of the mentioned ingredients and in her family, they usually hunt the ingredients. Today’s meat, the moose, was shot by her husband. It’s not required that you hunt the meat yourself, but her parents, as well as her husband's family grew up living in the woods, and hunting their food was as much a tradition as a necessity. 

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Intrigued by her comment about the family growing up in the woods I ask about her heritage. She said that you can easily tell by looking at her face or her husband's face that they have “wild traits” alluding to Indigenous roots, but ancestrally, their bloodline is not significant enough to be considered “Indigenous” by Canadian law. 

Back to the task at hand, Muriel explains, the dough is usually made the day before from lard, flour, and salt, then left to sit overnight. Afterward, the meat is cut into strips and left to marinate with onion, salt, pepper, chicken stock, and beef stock; then it too is left overnight.

I know what you’ve been thinking since the fourth paragraph: why not skip all this effort and focus on the poutine? Everyone knows that poutine is a culturally significant dish with a controversial origin that can easily be found across the province and around the world. Well – chances are you already know the history of the poutine and can effortlessly walk into any of the locations claiming to be the first. But that experience can be had by anyone, this experience will be considerably more memorable and, in my experience, the greater the effort, the greater the reward. Read on my little poutine protester, read on… 

After a day on the lake and a night with some friends, we enjoy dinner, company, and jokes. Mainly at the expense of the family's house pet we are staying with, a potbelly pig named Clochette or, in English, Tinker Bell. I made the mistake of thinking the pig was part of the meal and naturally, the jokes rolled out easily in French and English as the pig snorted around the BBQ whilst bacon cheeseburgers were being made.

The two teenage translators and I return the next morning to meet Muriel and her two sisters who are helping with the final execution. These poor teenage girls came to the lake to sun-tan, swim, and stand-up paddleboard, and here they are with me at 7 am before even eating breakfast, translating how to make tourtière. I’m sure they are feeling slightly misled.

First, the crust is left to sit at room temperature for ten minutes then rolled out and worked into the large baking pan; then, in goes the moose & onion mix, a layer of peeled cubed potatoes, then moose, potatoes, moose, potatoes, until it's full. In all, there are 10 lbs of potatoes, 5 lbs of moose, and two onions in here! 

Then a mix of chicken and beef soup base with water is poured over top to just below the final potato line and it’s all sealed shut with another layer of the crust. Muriel tastes the base, then her sisters taste it, then I taste it, and she asks my opinion. Since brushing my teeth, my first calories of today are a mix of raw onion, raw moose, raw potatoes, and soup base, I’m not sure I have the best opinion for flavor profiles right now. I smile, and say it's good – then Muriel promptly adds more beef base.

From here a hole is made in the very center to allow the steam to escape, otherwise, you’ll have a soggy crust. Then into the oven for close to seven hours at 390oF while the ingredients tenderize and meander into each other.

Before leaving, I try to confirm a recipe for this book and Muriel looks at me like I looked at her when she told me we were cooking mouse. Muriel says that there has never really been an exact recipe in her family. She grew up watching her Mom make this dish and never saw her Mom measure anything. Before that, her mother got the recipe from her grandparents who could not read or write, so a written document would have been of no use to them. When she first saw someone with a written recipe, it said one handful of this or four or five handfuls of that, as no one had a standardized system of measuring. Instead, she repeated out loud what more or less went in today's dish, noting that you may need to adjust as you go.

Seven hours later along with a house full of family and friends, we all sat down to one of the most regionally and potentially, provincially important dishes in the entire province, with a woman whose family has been making it since the ingredients had to be hunted down just to get started. Tourtière du Lac-St-Jean was then served alongside a salad of cream, lettuce, onion powder, pepper, and green onion. Muriel noted this was the most authentic salad she could make, as they were so poor as kids that the closest thing you might get to a salad dressing was the the cream from your recently milked cow.

What makes Tourtière du Lac-St Jean so special? I didn’t spend my life drinking the pristine water or breathing the fresh air that comes off beautiful Lac-St Jean, so I can only give my opinion. But it would seem that the unique climate and amazing people here are a magnet for culturally delicious foods and incredible experiences like this one. 

Recipe:

Crust 

• 6 cups white flour
• 2 ¼ cups lard
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1 ⅓ cups of water
• 1 cap of white vinegar

In a measuring cup, add the egg whisked with 1 ⅓ cups of water and the cap full of white vinegar. 

In a separate bowl, add the flour, lard, and salt and mix by hand with a pastry blender to mince the dough to perfection. Once blended, the egg mixture is added and cut in, the same way. If the mix appears to be too thin, add a bit more flour. 

Wrap in a ball with saran and leave in the fridge overnight, then allow to sit the next day at room temperature for 10 minutes before using.

Divide the dough into ¼ and ¾, saving a ¼ for the top. Then roll the crust onto a non-stick sheet to roughly ½” thick. Once a large oval shape is made, carefully fold it in half, then in half again, creating a triangle shape to keep it from breaking. Then over to a large black porcelain enamel roasting pan, the type that looks like it could hold a 20 lb turkey and has been the focus of a lot of family meals. 

The crust is then rolled over the edge of the pan. If you find it falls short or breaks, you can add additional pieces by overlapping the edges and sticking them together with a light brushing of water. 

The recipe is part cooking and part construction. 

Filling:

• 5 lbs moose, (optionally divide this up with bear, beaver, caribou, deer, Canadian geese and/or hare) 
• 10 lbs garden potatoes
• 2 medium white onions
• 1 tbsp pepper
• ¼ cup chicken stock 
• ½ cup and beef stock 

Wash, peel, and cube the potatoes and leave them to sit in water overnight. Then cut the meat into finger-thick strips and marinate overnight with diced onions, and a bit of dry beef and chicken broth.

Construction:

Once the dough is rolled out into the pan, layer the meat and potatoes into the pan in thirds, starting with the potatoes, until full just below the edge of the pan. Then, top off with a mix of 1 cup dry beef stock to 4 liters of water until an inch below the top. You can taste the mix and if desired, add more beef stock.

Next roll out the top crust to ½” thick, moisten the edge of the crust around the pan, and cover the top of the pot with the dough. Then roll the edges together and make a ¾” round hole in the center to allow the water to evaporate or to add more liquid if required.

Cover with a lid and place in the oven at 360oF until the crust is brown, about 30 minutes. Then down to 300oF for 7-10 hours. In seven hours it will be ready, in ten hours it will be very tender but will require adding a bit more of the liquid beef stock mix. Check the moisture level every couple of hours while cooking.
If adding a salad, use any fresh vegetables from your garden and fresh cream from your cow 🙂