The Cooking Ninja

I was at Michèle's place recently and was browsing through her small but valuable library of cook books when one titled Tourtes, feuilletés et autres pies caught my eye. On the front cover was this delicious looking meat pie that had me drooling over it. There are a lot of interesting recipes in this book and I couldn't decide which to try it out ... so here comes Pierre, my knight in shinning armour (or more exactly a Mystic Blue coupé - times change) to the rescue. After browsing the book for a long while and salivate at a few pages, he picked on this interesting recipe and this is what we had for dinner that day.

Tourte à la dinde et granny smith

(taken from Tourtes, feuilletés et autres pies by Anny Mayer-Armbruster)

Preparation: 30 minutes
Baking: 40 minutes
Makes: 6

Ingredients

• 2 granny smith apples
• 700 g turkey (2/3 minced & 1/3 cubed 1x1 cm)
• ½ savoy cabbage (chou vert frisé)
• 2 tbsp oil
• 15 cl white wine - dry
• 10 cl fluid crème fraîche
• 2 shortcrust pastry (pâte brisée)
• 1 egg yolk (slightly beaten with a bit of milk)
• salt & pepper

Directions

1. Peel the apples and cut them into quarters.
2. Mince 2/3 of the turkey meat together with the apples.
3. Separate the leaves from the cabbage and remove the middle hard stem.
4. Boil the cabbage in a pot of boiling salted water for about 3 minutes. Drain and plunge them in cold water to cool them. Well drain them and cut them in thin slices.
5. Heat the pan with 1 tbsp oil, stir in the minced turkey and cabbage. Add in the white wine, the crème fraîche and season it with salt and pepper. Let it simmer uncovered, stirring it often until the liquid is absorbed. Then keep it cool.
6. Cook and season the rest of the turkey (cubed) in a pan with the rest of the oil. Mix with the stuffing. Keep it cool.
7. Lay the pastry on a deep pie dish or baking pan lined with the baking paper. Spread the stuffing in the pie.
8. Fold in the side border of the dough (towards the stuffing) and brush it with water (this helps to seal the two pastry). Then cover it with the other pastry, pressing on the border a little to make sure it is sealed to the bottom pastry. Fold in whatever is left on the side.
9. Cut a tiny hole in the middle of the pie a make a chimney using a small rolled piece of cardboard.
10. Brush the surface of the pie with the beaten yolk-milk mixture.
11. Bake it at 200°C (400°F - gas mark 6) for about 30 minutes.

The Verdict

This is the first time I'm baking this dish so I wasn't sure what to expect. For me, the pie itself taste fine: it has the nice flavour of the meat and cabbage, but it's overall kinda flat (a feeling that my in-laws also share). Perhaps I'm used to eating my food with lots of spices and not used to something that is relying more on just its flavour without any spices enhancing it. Pierre on his side somewhat likes it (funnily for someone who doesn't really like cabbage) and had a second helping too, but felt that there was way too much stuffing.

In preparation of this pie, I forgot to mince the apples together with the turkey meat so I did them both separately. We replaced the dry white wine with apple cider (we ran out of white wine in our cave and since we have apples in the recipe, we thought «why not?») and thick crème fraîche instead of the liquid version. We were somewhat taken aback by the large quantity of water that our stuffing produced during cooking and baking. In the end we had to scoop out the water. We don't know if this is due to the fact that we used apple cider instead of wine (we don't believe it should make much of a difference) or maybe I didn't drained the cabbage well.

We both felt that there was way too much meat in this pie compared to the quantity of crust, and would recommend cutting the quantity by 1/3 if you attempt the recipe. Also the book called for 1/3 of the turkey to be cubed. To us, it doesn't really make a big difference in taste and the chunks of meat aren't very nice to munch.

Note

When choosing savoy cabbage, choose a head that's heavy for its size. The leaves should be crisp, not limp, and there should be no sign of browning. Refrigerate, tightly wrapped, in a plastic bag for up to 1 week.