Oh, savoury pursuit!

This is the perfect time of year to enjoy soul-satisfying meat pies

Ron Eade, The Ottawa Citizen

Published: Wednesday, December 06, 2006

By any measure, the Savoury Pursuits bake shop at 14 Industrial Dr., Almonte, is a tiny storefront operation that's packed to capacity if more than three people drop by at the same time. The front sales area amounts to a 12- or 15-foot span in a rather odd triangle shape, made even more close thanks to space occupied by a glass display counter, a tangle of shelving on the walls, rows of cookbooks, a display table fashioned from stacked dish cartons, an Ikea desk, one Dell computer, a printer, assorted ribbons, rolls of Scotch tape, scissors and pastry display pedestals in the window.  Reminds me of my cluttered basement -- yikes!  "We call it the world's smallest shop," says Paul Helm, a former theatre director who opened the bakery and catering business with his wife Bonny Riedel in the early 1990s.

It began when they started selling baked goods and take-home food products at area markets. In fact, they still sell regularly at the Carp Farmer's Market on Saturdays in the summer, and at the new Lansdowne Farmers' Market in Ottawa.  They'll have a full line of baked goods at the Christmas Carp Farmers' Market on Friday and Saturday, when you can also find out about their upcoming brunches at Carnivic Lodge at Mount Pakenham ski area this winter.  "We find our fruit pies are very popular," Bonnie says. "In the summer we'll go to the markets with 60 to 90 pies, and we'll sell out every week."  Production is done in the back by three full- and four part-time employees. While the kitchen has more room to maneuver than in the front, it is still quite cluttered with cooling racks, ovens, counters, shelving and the like.

Favourite pies include apple (always a safe bet), apple-strawberry, strawberry-rhubarb, mixed berry, available in either regular pastry or crumble crust. "We'll usually take at least 15 different pies to the market, and we're well known for our butter tarts." Oh, but what intrigues me most is their meat pies. To me, winter is definitely meat pie season, and at Christmas that means tourtiere.  Tourtiere is the traditional Christmas Eve or reveillon pie in Quebec served when the family returns from midnight mass. Tourtiere -- or any meat pie, for that matter -- can be made ahead and frozen, which makes it a very convenient treat when friends drop by on short notice.  Meat pies are definitely much better homemade -- not purchased frozen from a store at ridiculously low prices. For starters, the quality of ingredients in homemade pies is generally better, and hand dicing at least some of the meat tends to noticeably improve the texture.

Many factory-made meat pies have a gloppy texture reminiscent of cat food -- largely because the filling is ground fine so that machines can squirt it into the pastry shell.

Pastry also tends to fall short with supermarket pies. At home, my preference is to use lard in pastry because it produces flakier results than fats that contain water (like butter). On the other hand, butter has a better taste.  The purpose of fat is to melt during baking, leaving air spaces between layers of flour. The longer the fat takes to melt, the more defined those air spaces become. That's why I find lard, with a higher melting temperature than butter, makes a flakier crust.  Bonnie uses vegetable shortening in her pastry, which she cuts by hand into the flour. "We still hand cut all of our pastry, she says, "because we find that machines will overwork the dough and make it tough."  Another trick is to chill the meat filling before spooning it into the pastry shell. This gives the pastry time to cook and become flaky before the filling warms and becomes more liquid.

We've got some interesting variations of meat pie recipes, here and on page E6, all from the kitchen at Savoury Pursuits. Use either the Basic Short Crust or store-bought sheets of phyllo pastry for the ultimate flaky result. (Or, in a pinch, buy a box of two pre-made shells in the store, then use one for the bottom and the other for the top crust of your meat pie.)

The Moroccan Chicken B'Stilla pie on page E6 is both aromatic and savoury, a hallmark of Moroccan cuisine so beloved by Bonnie and Paul. It includes a spice mixture called ras en hanout, which is normally an exotic and complex Moroccan blend that can contain up to 50 different ingredients, according to Barron's Food Lovers Companion. Typically it would include ginger, anise, cinnamon, nutmeg, peppercorns, cloves, cardamom, dried flowers, nigella, mace, galangal and tumeric.

The recipe we're using is less complicated. Don't be afraid to adjust the ingredients in ras en hanout to suit your taste.

You'll also notice the various recipes call for a combination of ground and hand-diced meat, where diced meat is cooked separately from the ground. This two-step method gives the meat pie a more interesting texture than if you used, say, ground meat alone. (If you don't have kitchen scales to measure the ingredients, ask your butcher to weigh the meat for you.)

Finally, don't be discouraged if you don't see elk meat at the supermarket. It's easily found in Ottawa at The Elk Ranch (call 613-599-0772; website www.elkranch.com) at 1271 Old Carp Rd. The ranch is owned and operated by Thom van Eeghen and his wife Fay Armitage, who sell to the public.  Elk, which is slightly more sweet than beef and less gamey tasting than venison, may also be ordered at Saslove's Meat Market in the Byward Market, and Glebe Meat Market. Call ahead to be sure.

For more information, call Savoury Pursuits at 613-256-7058.