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IS THAT MY CUE?
HIGHER FARE FROM LOWER CANADA
Tourtière is one of our best-selling items during the holidays. Quebecois in origin, the meat pie dates back to the region’s colonial settlements where it became part of the Christmas Réveillon feast. Luckily, the French-Canadians were kind enough to eventually disseminate their delicious dish across Canada and parts of New England. We sell it year round but for many people it’s still a holiday specialty.
If anyone doubts the exclusively Canadian origin of tourtière you need only to consult The Larousse Gastronomique to confirm that no such dish exists in France. It is the butter tart of main courses.
Like any good creation myth, the origins of the term tourtière are up for debate. There are two main schools of thought; the pan people and the pigeon people. The pan folk hold dear the notion that tourtière derives its name from the French ceramic tourtière dish in which you cook a pie or a tourte. Like how a casserole comes in a casserole. In the opposing camp are the pigeon people who believe, as states The Laura Secord Canadian Cookbook, that “originally this French-Canadian specialty was prepared with passenger pigeons or tourtes as they were known in French”. Regardless, we hold it as a matter of faith that our tourtières are the best in town.
When making tourtière the Sanagan’s kitchen starts with our house-made pastry which is filled with onion, bacon and ground pork simmered in milk with pepper, clove, nutmeg, allspice, ginger, and thyme.
Purchased cooked, they only need to be reheated. Or take home a frozen one and finish it in the oven for a fresh-baked experience. Either way, they bring a delectable feast of culinary Canadiana to your table.
If you’re thinking of adding tourtière to your Sanagan’s shopping list for the holidays be sure to place your order soon. It’s an old-time favourite that sells out fast.
One Pâté More
Any Paleron is a Pal of Mine
Sanagan's Syrup
Pancake Day a.k.a. Shrove Tuesday was one of the highlights of our heathen/Christian childhood calendar. You understood there was some vague religious thing about it but what really mattered was — pancakes for dinner! And pancakes means maple syrup.
Sanagan’s maple and birch syrups are produced by Shady Grove Maple in Woolwich Ontario, just outside of Guelph. There, Heather and Dan Goetz tap their woodlots and undertake the labour intensive process of turning sap into syrup. Now, lest you have visions of maples trees festooned with old metal buckets and a rustic sugar shack out by the beaver pond, understand that Shady Grove is serious operation. Across 15 local woodlots, they have over 30,000 taps operating on a vacuum system. They can process 4000 gallons of sap per hour. This is what allows them to reliably supply us with GRADE A AMBER maple syrup. Out of the four maple syrup grades; golden, amber, dark and very dark, amber is your classic table syrup; the lustrous pour that provides the definitive Canadian breakfast. And if some of that syrup spills over into the bacon pile? Smoke, sweet, salt, fat; it’s like making love to a lumberjack.
Maple syrup is the king but birch syrup is its lesser-known and surprising sibling. The birch sap season is later and shorter and you need almost twice as much sap to make the syrup. The result of this painstaking process is a thick and dark syrup with a revelatory flavour featuring notes of molasses, licorice and a long tangy fruity finish. Its vibrant flavour will enliven your vinaigrettes, marinades and glazes.
Shady Grove syrups are just one of the many Ontario-made sauces, pickles and condiments that make us so much more than just a butcher shop.
Andouille For Mardi Gras? Yes We Do
You might think that it’s a bit of a stretch for a Toronto butcher to be writing about Mardi Gras but here’s two reasons why March 5th is being celebrated in our newsletter.
1. Sanagan’s makes some of the best andouille sausage in town. So when you shop for your Mardi Gras feast, whether it features a gumbo, jambalaya or an étoufée, make a stop at Sanagan’s Gerrard or Kensington and get your andouille.
2. The establishment of New Orleans and the term Mardi Gras, as it applies Louisiana, are both attributable to the French Canadian and really long-named, Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. Yup, it was a Montrealer who made this stuff up while he was representing the Colonial French in what is now the Gulf Coast region of the United States. Ergo, we should claim Mardi Gras as being partially Canadian, like General Motors and The Mamas and the Papas. And the direct link between Nova Scotia’s displaced Acadians and Louisiana’s Cajuns only strengthens our claim on Mardi Gras being as Canadian as broomball.
Old World French and New World Louisiana-style andouille sausage are now only distant cousins but what they still have in common is pork and smoke.
Ours fall into the Louisiana grilling style, featuring ground pork in a natural hog casing, flavoured with the typical Cajun mix of garlic, onion, thyme, black pepper and paprika. Then we kick it up a notch (where is Emeril these days?) with cayenne, marjoram, clove and nutmeg. These additions help it to shine in those classic New Orleans dishes.
If you want to keep things simple for Mardis Gras or you’re just looking a zippy prepared sausage, our Andouille are hot smoked over apple wood and are ready to go. Just throw them on the grill, in the pan or in the oven and heat them through.
Laissez les bons temps rouler, eh.
Valentine's Day Menu
Charcuterie Board-ing School
The most important thing about a New Year’s party? Have fun! What’s not fun? Stressing about the food. As a guest you want to bring something portable, pleasing and easy for the host. As a host you want to serve a celebratory spread that doesn’t require being in the kitchen until next year. A charcuterie board selected from Sanagan’s deli counter does it all.
To start with, here are some seasonal Sanagan’s exclusives and house-made items that will really flatter your New Year’s platter.
Mangalitsa: Our special speck, copa, bacon and prosciutto from the rare-breed Hungarian Mangalitsa pig. (Ontario-raised, of course.)
Premium Pâté en Croute: Our decadent pastry-encased pâté gets even decadenter over the holidays. We’ll be packing them with things like venison, smoked duck breast and foie gras. Naughty? Nice? You should still get a slice.
Holiday Terrines: Our in-house charcutier has whipped up various recipes to bring a touch of luxury to your celebrations.
Boudin Blanc: A delicate white sausage flavoured with black truffles.
Pickles and Condiments: Beerhall and Old Yeller mustard, pickled red onions, giardiniera, red current and cranberry jelly. All made by our Kensington kitchen team.
THE FIVE POINTS OF THE CHARCUTERIE BOARD STAR
Lets look at the essentials that will make your tray tres bon!
1. Cold Cuts and Sausages
Salamis, hams, cured meats and dried sausages; nothing says Buffet the Appetite Slayer like a big spread of these bite-sized delights. The cold cuts are served as melt-in-your-mouth deli slices and the sausages can be chopped into rounds for variations in texture and shape.
2. Terrines and Pâtés
These rich traditional preparations are the essence of festive nibbling. Spread these around and your New Year’s toast will have never had it so good.
3. Cheese
Party snacking without cheese? No whey! Sanagan’s Kensington is proud to carry a selection of Ontario cheeses. Hard, soft, creamy and washed rind classic styles are available from artisanal producers like Monforte, Fifth Town, Back 40 and Forfar. If you're a Gerrard shopper, you can visit our neighbours at The Pantry for a similar selection.
4. Condiments and Pickles
The acidity of the pickles, the sweetness of the jellies, the bite of the mustard; they all add essential counterpoints of flavour, texture, colour and moisture to your board.
5. Grains
Fill ‘em up with crackers, toasts and bread. Even though we’re a butcher shop, we can help here too. Evelyn’s and our neighbour, Blackbird Bakery constitute Kensington’s cracker collection. And Gerrard’s got you covered with fresh Blackbird bread, daily.
THE NUTS AND BOLTS OF HAM AND CHEESE
As a starting point, you could budget 100 grams of proteins per guest. So for 10 partiers you could select 330 grams of cold cuts and sausage, 330 grams terrines and pates and 330 grams of cheese. Then add in your garnishes, bread and crackers and your guests will be greeted with the sight of charcuterie board that elegantly yet emphatically decrees — let the festive munching begin!
The above is a very approximate formula for an inexact art. Most customers will just come in, and with the help of a Sanagan’s meat hawker, build their charcuterie board navigating between their eyes and their wallet.
Musings on Cotechino
It was very early into my time working at Mistura, a mainstay of Toronto’s Italian dining scene, that I had my first exposure to cotechino. Bollito misto may not be the most well known Italian dish, but it is very classically Italian, relying on quality ingredients that have been simply prepared. This was the first time I had seen the dish, but while it was new to me, most of the ingredients were pretty common. The one that stuck out was the delicious cotechino sausage with its exceptional texture. It isn't a common ingredient in Toronto, and I haven't had much of a chance to work with it since, until our resident Charcutier Scott started making his own.
Like most great charcuterie, cotechino was born of a need to conserve limited meat supplies for the longest possible time. Rumour has it that this sausage's use dates to the early 1500's in Northern Italy. It is very similar to the traditional zampone, with the main difference being that zampone are typically stuffed into the hind trotter from the pig. The French produce a version of their own (which Scott has also played around with) called sabodet.
Our house-made cotechino is a combination of pork meat, fat and skin, and flavoured with ground coriander and warm spices such as allspice, cinnamon and ginger. It's the use of the pork skin that leads to the unique texture of the cotechino.
While you could, I suppose, use cotechino in most any instance where you would use regular pork sausages, there are a couple of applications we would specifically recommend for you. The combination of most accessible and traditional would be as part of your New Year's Eve dinner, served with lentils (which represent the prospect of money to come in the new year). Less traditional but equally delicious would be in place of our regular breakfast sausages at any holiday brunch. And then there’s bollito misto. This is a fantastic use of the product, but much better suited to someone who has a full day to devote to the prep, and 11 friends to share the meal with. However you choose to enjoy our cotechino, come in for it soon as we only make it through the holiday season. Felice anno nuovo!