Sunday gravy with yeah right: Season Ten Finale! Tourtière! For all of our Canadian Neighbours!

For the last time this season, good morning everyone!

Happy Labor Day weekend and all of that good shit too.

Welcome to the Sunday Gravy season ten finale.

Yes. Ten fucking years of Sunday Gravy right here on DFO. A mixed bag of complete honor and colossal pain-in-the ass that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

Thanks for taking the ride with me. I wish I could truly summarize the changes in my cooking skills going back to the first year compared with where those skills are today. Let’s just say the difference is fucking VAST and stick with that.

Not just the cooking skills, no sir. Presentation skills are infinitely improved and the one skill we really focused on this year, food photography skills. Just look at that banner photo for today and compare that with ANYTHING from the first early years of Sunday Gravy.

Ain’t no goddamn comparison at all!

At the end of each season I like to look back on some of my favorite menus and I thought we could throw in some of my favorite food photos from this season while we were at it.

Why just last week we had this beauty of a photo.

With our eggs benedict.

I like the colors and depth of this next one too.

That’s our sausage ragu. More on that in a bit.

But the photos that really stand out in my mind were this one first.

Filet mignon with gorgonzola cream sauce. Dear God that photo is awesome.

I was also partial to this shot from when we made fondant potatoes.

Another beauty was from our homemade blueberry muffin episode.

But I have to choose the next photo for its composition, centering, contrasts of colors and it’s just a cool damn photo.

From our chili crisp episode, baked brie.

Favorite menu of the year is a tough one. We had several fighting for top contention so I’m going to split the award for 2nd place but we did have a pretty clear number one dish.

Best dish of season ten goes to Birria!

Just a knockout punch of a recipe. The consome was exceptional too and was even repurposed a few times after we had our main meal. Killer dish.

And our runners up were:

2A – Keema Aloo

2B- Sausage Ragu. see above for photo.

Both dynamite, both are fairly simple to prepare and both will be duplicated again in my kitchen going forward.

Our menu today was requested several times and as far back as 5-6 years or so, give or take?

I also believe one of the requests was made in person so that carries additional fucking weight.

Today we finally make Tourtière!

Drop the knowledge bomb on us Wiki!

“Tourtière is a French Canadian meat pie dish originating from the province of Quebec, usually made with minced pork, veal or beef and potatoes. Wild game is sometimes used. It is a traditional part of the Christmas réveillon and New Year’s Eve meal in Quebec.”

Let’s get to work!

recipe courtesy of allrecipes.com

Crust:

3 cups all-purpose flour

2 sticks unsalted butter, sliced, frozen

1 teaspoon kosher salt

7 tablespoons ice-cold water, or as needed

2 teaspoons distilled white vinegar

Spice Blend:

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon dried thyme

½ teaspoon dried sage

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground ginger

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

¼ teaspoon ground allspice

¼ teaspoon ground mustard

⅛ teaspoon ground cloves

1 pinch cayenne pepper

or your choice of variations using every or any selection of the spices.

Filling:

1 large russet potato, peeled, quartered

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 tablespoon butter

1 large onion, finely chopped

1 pinch salt

½ cup finely diced celery

4 cloves garlic, crushed

1 pound ground pork

1 pound ground beef

1 cup potato cooking water, plus more as needed

Sounds like a lot of motherfucking work? It’s really not. Just tackle that shit in stages. Here, I’ll walk your asses through it.

Since we’re making everything from scratch today let’s start with the dough.

Like any good pastry dough this one uses a whole shitload of butter. Two sticks cut into cubes and then frozen.

Mix together the spice blend.

Take note, I didn’t have every single spice listed in the spice blend ingredient list so use what you got and feel free to customize to your preference. Try and keep the whole “Holiday-ish” theme going with the spices though with the nutmeg, cinnamon and cloves and the like.

Let’s go ahead and boil our potato for the filling.

Then give it a mash.

Now back to the crust. Get the flour and the frozen butter into the working bowl of your food processor.

Give a few pulses to cut in the butter. You want the dough to hold together when you squeeze it between your fingers. Then drizzle the ice water over the top until the dough comes together. Not too wet and not too dry.

Form into a disk, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour.

This dough was goddamn perfect and had the exact texture we were looking for.

Back to the filling we go. Mince up an onion.

Grab a big ass skillet and melt some butter in said skillet

Brown the onions in the butter then add in the celery, garlic and spice mixture.

This is going to be aromatic as a motherfucker with the onions and the full-on spice assault.

Hey it kind of does smell like Christmas up in here.

Now add in the beef and pork. Duroc pork today because we’re being all fancy and shit.

Cook until browned then add in the potato water and cook for an additional 30-40 minutes until most of the water has been cooked out.

Stir in the mashed potato.

Set aside and let cool completely.

Yes, that skillet has some serious fucking heft to it. This fucker isn’t “dainty” in any way, shape or form.

Time to build the beast.

Preheat the oven and roll out the dough.

See what I mean by the texture of the dough? That’s the shit you’re looking for, right there.

Add in all of the filling.

Yes. ALL of it.

Roll out the second dough, then lid it up. Crimp the dough pieces together, flute the edges of the crust and cut in a few vents.

Baste with an egg wash then into the 375 degree oven she goes for one (1) hour.

Let’s get a gander at the finished pie OK?

Hello!

Fuck that is gorgeous. Look at that crust!

Again, let this bad boy cool to about room temperature before cutting yourself a slice.

Go ahead now.

Feel free to sample as is since it’s perfectly delicious that way. I was amazed at the structural integrity of this bastard. You could hold it with one hand and take bites off of it. No lie.

I’ll let our northern neighbours explain how they eat this up No(u)rth but I went ahead and made a beef gravy for the pie.

Shit. You didn’t think I was going to have a season finale without gravy did you?

Ladle some right on top.

So, so very fucking good. You get all of the “Christmas” spices permeated throughout but it remains savory, meaty, rich and fucking awesome. That gravy works like a motherfucker on there.

Yes, I did try ketchup as is the custom I believe and it was very good too but you know me. I’m a goddamn gravy man, myself.

This was delicious room temperature, I had a slice straight out of the refrigerator and thought it was excellent and this baby really did feed 6 of us with PLENTY leftover.

I totally get the hype on this and at the end of the day it wasn’t too difficult to do. I read some reviews where people made 2 or 3 of them and froze a couple.

That’s…Dedication?

Finally a regional appropriate dessert item to finish the theme.

And there we are!

That’s a wrap on season 10 folks!

When Sunday Gravy started back in the nascent days of [DOOR FLIES OPEN] way back in 2015 I had no idea what I was doing other than writing and cooking and giving recipes. I thought it would be cool to have a regular feature. Thanks to all of you it’s actually turned into a whole fucking “Thing.” And to think I’ve made it through ten years of this. That’s fucking nuts.

As of now I plan on being back for season 11, the week after the Owl but I’ll think about that later. Right now I’m enjoying a three day weekend and I’m off to Ireland on the 11th of this month so my brain is in full on “I’ll think about that shit later” mode cuz I’m going on vacation!

Been a great year everyone and y’all are a big part of it.

Best of luck to most of your teams this coming season. You other teams know who you are and what you did.

Until next time, be well everybody. Stay safe and as always…

PEACE!