Canadian Recipes - The Cure For Homesickness!

So I promised Jen some Canadian recipes to possibly aleviate a little of her home sickness. Despite the fact that I hardly eat any of these - they are TRULY Canadian dishes, best eaten while at the cottage or on vacation in Montreal, Quebec. Yes, Mr. Gurnal, we'll get you up here one day!

Butter Tarts



This is the original recipe that dates back over 100 years.

Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
3 tablespoons butter, melted
1 cup currants or raisins
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
2 teaspoons vinegar
pinch of salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
One batch of pie crust
Method:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Beat the eggs well. Add sugar, syrup, and melted butter and beat again. Add the currants, walnuts, vinegar, salt, and vanilla extract and mix vigorously.

Put a small amount of corn meal into tart tins or muffin pans OR use cupcake papers (latter is recommended). Place circles of uncooked pie crust into the pans. Fill the shells 2/3 full and bake until the pastry is light brown, about 20 minutes. For runnier tarts, cook for 15 to 17 minutes.

Notes:
Recipe yields two dozen tarts of approximately 10,500 calories each.
The tarts should cool before they're eaten. Store in a sealed container at room temperature. Consume within five days, if they last that long. Freezing is OK but may result in loss of flavor.

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"Traditional French Canadian Tourtiere (meat pie), served on Reveillon (Christmas Eve)."


INGREDIENTS
1 pound lean ground pork
1/2 pound lean ground beef
1 onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup water
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme, crushed
1/4 teaspoon ground sage
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 recipe pastry for a 9 inch double crust pie
DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C).
In a saucepan, combine pork, beef, onion, garlic, water, salt, thyme, sage, black pepper and cloves. Cook over medium heat until mixture boils; stirring occasionally. Reduce heat to low and simmer until meat is cooked, about 5 minutes.
Spoon the meat mixture into the pie crust. Place top crust on top of pie and pinch edges to seal. Cut slits in top crust so steam can escape. Cover edges of pie with strips of aluminum foil.
Bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes, remove foil and return to oven. Bake for an additional 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown. Let cool 10 minutes before slicing.

Montreal Poutine
http://www.montrealpoutine.com/


There are about 8 variations (that I'm aware of) of this traditional Montreal dish. However - the best one by far is the original. Fries, cheese curds and gravy. Yum.

Prepare french-fries, approximately 2 cups into a serving bowl. Drop 1/2 C of cheddar cheese curds on top of the fries. Ladel 1 cup of sauce (while hot) on top of the fries and cheese. Allow to rest for 3-5 minutes, permitting the sauce and cheese to work together. Grab a fork, and enjoy!

"Beaver Tails"

Canadian Doughnuts
" If you ever visited Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, in the winter months on the Rideau Canal, which is the longest skating rink in the world, they serve a sweet pastry, that is essentially a flat doughnut with sugar on top.

Dough:
1/2 cup warm water
5 teaspoons dry yeast
pinch of sugar
1 cup warm milk
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
1/3 cup oil
4 1/4 - 5 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
oil for frying
granulated sugar for dusting
cinnamon

In a large mixing bowl, stir together the yeast, warm water and pinch
of sugar. Allow to stand a couple of minutes to allow yeast to swell or dissolve.

Stir in remaining sugar, milk, vanilla, eggs, oil, salt and most of flour to make soft dough. Knead 5-8 minutes (by hand or with a dough hook), adding flour as needed to form a firm, smooth, elastic dough. Place in a greased bowl.

Place bowl in a plastic bag and seal. (If not using right away, you can
refrigerate the dough at this point). Let rise in a covered, lightly greased bowl, about 30-40 minutes. Gently deflate dough, (if dough is coming out of the fridge, allow to warm up about 40 minutes before proceeding).

Pinch off a golf ball sized piece of dough. Roll out into an oval and let
rest, covered with a tea towel, while you are preparing the remaining
dough.

Heat about 4 inches of oil in fryer (a wok works best but you can use a Dutch oven or whatever you usually use for frying). Temperature of the oil should be about 385 F. Test by tossing in a tiny bit of dough and see if it sizzles and swells immediately. If it does, the oil temperature is where it should be.

Stretch the ovals into a tail - thinning them out and enlarging them as you do. Add the beaver tails to the hot oil, about 1-2 at a time.

Turn once to fry until the undersides are deep brown. Lift beaver tails
out with tongs and drain on paper towels.

Fill a large bowl with a few cups of white sugar . Toss beaver tails in
sugar (with a little cinnamon if you wish) and shake off excess.

You can also top off Beaver Tails with whatever preserves, pie fillings or simple powdered sugar.

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Butter tarts are best with a cup of tea (by this I mean a cuppa - not sweet tea). They're also great when it's stormy outside, so you grab a tart (insert comments here) a cuppa, and head outside with a big bulky sweater on and watch the impending storm.

Happy eating, all!