From the Kitchen of Grandma Olive

Every year my family makes what we call touque (took-kay) together for the holiday season. This year we’re having touque-making December 3rd! Touque is also called Tourtière which is French for “pie dish.” It is a meat pie that originated in Quebec, Canada (Woohoo Canada products represent!!) and is a traditional French-Canadian Christmas and New Year’s dish served at dinnertime.

Great-Grandma Olive

There is not one specific recipe for touque but my family uses a recipe my Great-Grandma Olive always used that has been passed-down for generations. Traditionally, you make a LOT of pies for the extended family the first week of December. Members from each family gather at the oldest mother’s home to help make the pies. My family makes 35-45 pies each year. The pies are then frozen and the first pie of the new batch cannot be eaten until Christmas morning. This recipe is for one pie.

 

**Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

 

SPECIAL SUPPLIES

• Pastry cutter or cuisinart with sharp blade to mix dough
• Cake tin (not a pie tin, sides on cake tins are higher & not slanted)
• Rolling Pin
• Blender to puree onion

INGREDIENTS FOR MEAT

• 1 pound coarsely ground pork (if they don’t have ground pork, ask the butcher for pork shoulder and have them ground it for you)
• 1/6 of a large onion
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• 1 cup water

DIRECTIONS TO MAKE MEAT
Puree onion in blender. Add correct amounts of meat, onion, water, salt and pepper. Cook on stove and add more water if there is not enough juice after evaporating. There should be about 2/3 meat and 1/3 juice after cooked.

INGREDIENTS FOR DOUGH

• 1 cup flour
• 1 (rounded) tablespoon Crisco
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/3 cup ice-cold water

DIRECTIONS TO MAKE DOUGH
Blend dry ingredients first with cuisinart or pastry cutter. Then add wet ingredients until mixture forms into a ball. Roll out a bottom crust (about 1/4 inch thick) of dough to cover inside of cake tin. Trim extra dough off sides after pinching around rim of tin. Roll the top crust, also about 1/4 inch thick, to lay over the top of the tin.

DIRECTIONS TO FINISH

• Fill cake tin about 2/3 full with meat and juice
• Cover meat with top crust. Pinch top crust to bottom crust around the rim of tin.
• Trim off the extra pie crust.
• Bake at 400 degrees until edges are slightly browned (about 20-30 minutes)
• Let it cool.
• Cover with tinfoil or put in large Ziploc bag
• Freeze until ready to eat.
• Reheat in oven at 350 degrees F for 1 hour uncovered before eating.

I’ll try to get some pictures posted of my amazing family making touque this weekend. It is quite the production considering there are over 40 of us (Including aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents!) What are some of your family traditions? I want to hear all about them in the comments!

Mount Manhattan

What’s your favorite Thanksgiving beverage? This year I think I’m going to make the 142 calorie Mount Manhattan my drink of choice to accompany my full plate of turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing! Mmmm!! Maybe I’ll even get my grandma to stray from her brandy old fashioned (sweet!) to have a sip! What’s your favorite–Tell me in the comments!

MOUNT MANHATTAN - November

Making That Frisky Whisky

I apologize in advance for this semi-boring post (boring to me, anyway) but the process of making whisky is something we need to touch on as amateur whisky drinkers, right? Right! I did a lot of research and this is what I understood, if I am wrong or you have anything to add, by all means, comment below!!

 

Here is a diagram to help you follow along!

 

As we learned from a previous posting, To E or not to E…that is the question!, whisk(e)y is “the general term covering bourbon, rye, Scotch and other liquors distilled from a mash of grain.” But what does “distilled” and “mash of grain” actually mean? How does the whole whisky-making process actually work? It’s a pretty complicated process with a lot of steps that all depend on what kind of whisky you’re making but I’ll try to give you a basic run-down.

If you’re more of a visual learner, check out this video on how to make whisky and then come back for the details.

Malting
All grains except barley are ground up, mixed with water, and then cooked. Barley is malted instead of cooked. The barley is soaked in water to germinate, or sprout, and then spread out and watered for about three weeks until it sprouts. This process converts the starch in barley into sugars. Once the barley sprouts, it is dried with hot air to stop the germination process.

Mashing
Mashing is when the combination of cooked grain, malted barley and warm water is mixed with heat to create a mash. For Scotch malt whiskey, the cooked grain is omitted from the combination. Mash is a cloudy, sugar-rich liquid, which is then ready to be distilled.

Fermenting
Before the distilling can happen, however, yeast needs to be added to the mash. The yeast organisms convert the sugars in the mash to alcohol. After 3-4 days of fermenting in the fermentation tank, the result is a liquid containing 10% alcohol. This liquid is called wash (in Scotland) or distiller’s beer (in the United States).

Distilling
Distilling is a way to separate mixtures by heating them to their boiling points. After fermenting, the wash is boiled to 172 degrees Fahrenheit because that’s alcohol’s boiling point. The alcohol turns into a vapor and is collected, condensed back into a liquid and collected. It is now called “low wine.” The low wine is distilled a second time to produce “high wine” which is about 70% alcohol.

Aging
The high wine is now ready to be aged in wooden barrels. Water is added to reduce the alcohol content. Usually to 50 or 60% for American whiskies and 65% for Scotch. Environment plays a part on how alcoholic the whiskies end up. “Scotch whiskeys are aged in cool, wet conditions so they absorb water & become less alcoholic. American whiskeys are aged in warmer, drier conditions so they lose water and become more alcoholic.”

Any questions? Ask in the comments!