Québécois Dinner at Home — Tourtière, Pea Soup and Stories from the Plateau

Québécois home cooking is almost entirely invisible to visitors to Montréal. The restaurants serve brunch and bistro food. The real Québécois table — the one that my grandmother set for réveillon on Christmas Eve and that my mother still does — is built around tourtière (the spiced meat pie with cinnamon and clove that has existed in this province since the 17th century), yellow pea soup with salt pork from the Laurentian mountains tradition, cipaille layered game pie, and tarte au sucre (sugar pie, which is richer and simpler than anything in a Parisian patisserie and completely unknown outside this province). I make this meal in my apartment for small groups across winter and occasionally in autumn. I cook everything from scratch. My partner makes the beer from Québec micro-breweries that pair with each dish. This is the food of a distinct nation inside a country, and it tastes like nowhere else on earth.