BS: French Canadians- I need your help1

Subject: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: Beccy
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 04:03 PM

Help me, please! My husband's mother is French Canadian. She moved to MASS when she was very young. Her Mum made a dish similar to Shepherd's Pie (ground meat, peas, corn, mashed taters and cheese...) but called it, according to my Mother-in-law, "pot de chima".

Here's the problem. My Mum-in-law does not remember how to speak French. She also does not remember EXACTLY how her parents pronounced the name of this dish.

I asked if it could be "pot de chinois" and she said maybe. Can anyone give me a clue about this? No one in her family cares, but it is driving me bonkers since I speak French.

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 04:06 PM

Are you sure it's not pootine?

,-)

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: Beccy
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 04:08 PM

not a clue, Clinton, not a clue.

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 04:10 PM

Sorry... I was just goofin...

Pootine is fries, gravy and either cheese or cheese curd... It's not what yer after...

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: MMario
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 04:29 PM

Pate Chinois as per SOAR

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: Beccy
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 04:54 PM

MMario! Thank ye, thank ye, thank ye. Now I've officially earned my moniker of person most likely to spend a lot of effort looking up useless facts that no one in THIS family really cares about. I can sleep soundly now.

Pate Chinois, eh? How does that equal Shepherd's Pie? Chinois is Chinese, n'est ce pas?

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 05:17 PM

Pate Chinois is not the same as Shepherd's Pie according to my Rog. His parents were both French-Canadian and his mom used to make the meat pies you're talking about. He's busy at work, so couldn't talk, but he said the equivalent of Shepherd's Pie was pronounced like "gor-ton." He said the Chinois was meat, macaroni, and tomato sauce. I'll ask him how to spell it properly when he gets home tonight. She used ot send several of these home with us everytime we visited.:-)

kat

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: Beccy
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 05:24 PM

Thanks a mil, katlaughing. It's an odd obsession, but its mine!

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: Brían
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 05:34 PM

I have heard meat pies refered to as pate chinios, although noone has ever explained to me how they came to be called that. I have read meat pies were originally game pies-filled with venison or whatever was available. Now they are usually filled with pork.

Brían

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: Brían
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 05:44 PM

There are some references here: Pate Chinois. However, it doesn't seem to be the same as a meat pie or Tourtiere.

Brían

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 05:46 PM

Madame Jehane Benoit wrote an "Encyclopedia of Canadian Cuisine," over 1000 large pages, but the recipes are entirely in English; I presume a similar volume was issued in French.
The recipe for Shepherds Pie in this book is the exact recipe found by MMario in another of her books. Other recipes use peas or carrots instead of corn, and one I have calls for a sprinkling of cheddar overall.

We often make a Tourtiére, another traditional French-Canadian dish. Here is a simple one:

6 slices bacon, cut into small pieces
1 lb ground pork
1/2 lb ground beef or, better, left over roast
1 onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup boiling water
1 clove garlic, minced
1 1/2 tsp salt or to taste if chopped celery used
1/4 tsp pepper
A little chopped celery or 1/4 tsp celery salt
1/4 tsp sage
pinch cloves, 1/4 tsp allspice
1 cup potatoes, mashed
Pastry for double crust pie

Fry bacon, cooked but not crisp. Add pork, beef and onion. Cook until meat is lightly browned. Add water and spices and reduce heat to simmer. Cover and cook 45 minutes more. Combine meat with mashed potatoes and cool slightly.
Line a 9-inch deep dish pie plate with pastry and fill with the mixture. Put on top crust and seal into position. Slash top to vent.
Bake in hot oven at 450 degrees F for 10-12 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake 30 minutes longer.
Options- leave out bacon. Add a little chili powder when mixing. Some people like green peas in it (not me).

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: Brían
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 05:48 PM

Hah! I see here

that a chinoisis a conical sieve used for straining and pureeing foods.

Brían

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 06:14 PM

Pâte and pâté are often confused. Pâte is a general term for pastry dough. Pâté is a general term for a pie, generally meat, but sometimes applied to vegetable or fruit pies.

Larousse was no help with the origin of Pâté chinois although that reference has Hungarian, Parisian, etc., etc.

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: katlaughing
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 08:13 PM

I was wrong, Rog says the pate chinois was made of hamburger, corn, and mashed potatoes, just like a Shepherd's Pie, with the mashed potatoes over the top and forming the crust.

The meat pies were made with pork, traditionally the "head" (grossing me out, here), etc. Of course, it all varies from family to family. Those meat pies were what his family called "gor-ton," or the tortierre as mentioned above.

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: Steve Latimer
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 10:11 PM

Ah, Tourtierre. A friend of mine used to go out with a French Canadian girl. She would bake one at Christmas using an old family recipe. It was wonderful. Haven't had it in years.

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 27 Jan 03 - 10:49 PM

Nothing better than the Tortiére at a good restaurant along the River in Québec, with a fruit dessert and a bottle of wine. I wish I could get back there often. The dish traditionally is made with two kinds of meat, usually pork and beef or veal and beef.

Use of the head in tourtiere sounds like a Depression era recipe.

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 12:45 AM

That it would be, and farther back, just plain thriftiness. Rog says they prided themselves on using everything and growing all that they needed. His lines go way back near Montreal. They still have a lot of relatives living on Isle Verte in the St. Laurent River, and elsewhere.

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: simon-pierre
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 01:45 AM

Who needs a French Canadian anyway? :-)

Now, Jehanne Benoît quoted on Mudcat, that's a piece of folklore...

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: Beccy
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 09:01 AM

So my question remains... why call it Pate Chinois? Since there really is no discernable pastry and I've never heard of the Chinese being wild about mashed potatoes.

Does the Chinois reference go to the potatoes being pureed? (Per Brian's post...chinoisis)

I know very well I'm giving this too much thought...

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help
From: simon-pierre
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 02:42 PM

Steak, blé d'inde, patates...

The Chinois seems to refer to the Chinese people that were employed to build the national railroad in the last century [19th, that is]. The usual meal was a mix of food that was cheap & abundant: corn, potatoes, beef.

That's what you can read in the Guide du Routard of Québec, kind of Frommers guide in french. I called a friend who studied ethnology, and she gave me the same answer. However, in both case, there was no sources, so I can't verify elsewhere. I can't explain either why the pâté chinois only survived in Québec, while the railroad crossed the whole Canada. It seems like the explanation, like the dish, belongs to the folklore...

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: Beccy
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 03:37 PM

Thank you, Simon-Pierre... and guess what, all! I told my Mum-In-Law, who previously had no interest in why her Mum called it what she did. She in turn called all her sisters (the 13 of them who remain with us...) and they were all thrilled to know a little something about their Mum. Thanks to everyone who contributed for making a moment.

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 03:46 PM

Found someone else- "For my entire life I thought this dish was called 'Pot de chinois.'" Source of the name: A G. Leclerc repeats the Chinese labor-Railroad story: Pate Chinois

Nice recipes for tourtiere and Pate chinois at: Recettes I hope I can translate them so that I can use them.

Simon-pierre, the French name would not survive long on the prairies or british Columbia. Here in Calgary (1,000,000 metro), there are Franch names used in French and other superior restaurants, but no French-Canadian cooking is regularly available. Turkish, Ethiopian, Indonesian, etc., but only French or Vietnamese-French here.

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: simon-pierre
Date: 28 Jan 03 - 10:45 PM

Well, Q, while I find traditionnal French Canadian cooking very good - and it has been a lot my culinary education [and I'm not 30 if this can clarify] - it is not a type of cooking very appropriate for modern times. It is very rich in grease and sugar that were needed when people where working hard and outside (loggers, farmers, etc.). It is impossible to have a similar diet, with all these calories, now that most people are working in front of a computer. Add to this that a very widespread meal like the pâté chinois don't look fine enough to have the honor of fine cooking.

These two facts makes that the actual québécois cooking tends to focus on typical products [fruits, fish, fine cheese] cooked with a variety of influences, mostly french, of course. Traditionnal cooking is slowly going away... but, as I work in a bookstore, I can tell you that Jehanne Benoît is still selling very well :-)

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: Beccy
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 07:55 AM

Can you give me some info on Jehanne Benoit? I am the "Food Evangelist" (at least that's what friends call me...) I've never met a good food that I haven't prostelytized about. : )

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: GUEST
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 09:22 AM

Could this be the tradition Acadian dish of Rappie or Robbie Pie. Sound like it to me. Acadian cooking is similar to french Canadian cooking in many ways but had adapted many of those recipes to a more east coast style. You could check out rappie Pie, that is what your dish sounds like to me.

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: An Pluiméir Ceolmhar
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 09:52 AM

Sounds as if it could be a corruption of "Parmentier".

The French name for shepherd's pie is "hachis Parmentier", the Duke (or some such ancien régime title) de Parmentier being the person credited in France with bringing the potato back to the Old World (as we used to call Europe, Africa and Asia Before Rumsfeld).

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 01:33 PM

Beccy- found this brief bio in the back of one of her many cookbooks, "Lamb Cookbook," 1979.
Jehane benoit was born and raised in Montreal, and educated there and in Paris. She received her degree in food chemistry from the Sorbonne University in Paris in 1925, studying under the famous Dr. Edouard de Pomiane, and later graduated from Pellaprat's Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris. .... a food writer and editor on such magazines as Gourmet and The Canadian, and through her books...."

She and her husband lived at Noirmouton, their sheep farm in the Eastern Townships of Quebec.

Her "Encyclopedia of Canadian Cuisine" is a monumental work, much sought after.

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: katlaughing
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 02:03 PM

Simon-Pierre, good point about the sugar, grease and people working harder, physically. That's what my Rog said, too, in later years his mom really modified the recipes...pouring off as much of the grease as possible, less sugar, etc.

Subject: RE: BS: French Canadians- I need your help1
From: GUEST,Q
Date: 29 Jan 03 - 02:28 PM

The comment about fats, etc., applies to other cookbooks as well. I use a Fanny Farmer Boston Cookbook from 1941 (approx.). Later editions after the war modified the recipes, removing cream and other higher calorie ingredients and ruined the recipes. Fanny Farmer had surreptitiously obtained a number of the recipes from well-known restaurants, and they are classic.
The Jehane Benoit recipes are good, no excess grease, etc. The Shepherd's pie is still a favorite across Canada, and it is not excessively calorific. We use leaner meats, add spices, and excess comes only with eating too much at a sitting.