Amanda "AJ" Dixon's Tourtiére

Recipes

Tourtiére

By Amanda "AJ" Dixon

If you ever dined at AJ Dixon’s now-closed Bay View restaurant, Lazy Susan, during the Christmas holidays, you may have seen a meat pie on the menu. A whole 8-inch pie with a top crust. In Dixon’s family, her great-grandma was the meat pie maker – doing so every year, but only on Christmas, per her great-granddaughter. “Eating one tastes like Christmas,” says Dixon, whose great-aunt assumed the task. This is another example of a dish Dixon wanted to “make better” and pass along to future generations of meat pie lovers. “I did a lot of research on the pie itself,” she says, and how to make a better pie crust. The original was made from a box of Jiffy pie crust mix. Dixon’s revamped version was sold at the restaurant every year. The ingredients are what shine it up. “It’s all ground pork spiced with cinnamon and allspice, mashed potatoes [and] an all-butter crust. We grew up eating it with ketchup.” At Lazy Susan, the ketchup was replaced by cranberry mustard, but Dixon still likes to eat it with ketchup. That condiment she could abide by, while the Jiffy crust, she could not.

The rolling pin you see in Dixon’s photo belonged, fittingly enough, to her great-grandmother, who used it as a baker working at Milwaukee machinery manufacturer Allis Chalmers. When she retired from that job, she was given the rolling pin. Not only is the tradition of pie-making carrying on with Dixon but the pin responsible for countless crusts is still in rotation. “I use it every time I make it,” she says.

Ingredients

Serves 6-8

Filling

1 pound ground pork

1 pound russet potatoes

1/2 pound yellow onions, diced

2 ounces unsalted butter

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1 egg

Salt (about 1 teaspoon)

Pepper (about 1/2 teaspoon)

Pie dough for a double-crusted pie (store-bought or homemade)

24 ounces flour

1 teaspoon salt

16 ounces cold, unsalted butter, diced medium

8 ounces of ice water

Instructions

Boil potatoes until tender. This can vary, depending on your stove, the amount of water in a pot, and whether you are boiling them whole or cut up. It should take about 15 to 30 minutes. Drain, put in a large bowl and set aside.

While the potatoes are cooking, preheat the oven (if baking pie) to 400 degrees. Melt butter in skillet, add onions, and cook for about 10 minutes until soft and lightly browned. We don’t want to “fry” them. Add pork. With a potato masher, mash up your pork, and cook thoroughly. Think crumbled, like you would for chili. Add spices and season with a bit of salt and pepper. Cook for about another two to three minutes to set in the spices. Remove from the heat. Add meat and all cooking liquid from the pan to potatoes, and mash.

Season the mixture with salt and pepper to taste. Potatoes suck up a lot of salt, so don’t be surprised if you add the whole teaspoon. Set the mixture aside.

Pie Dough:

Grate butter on a box grater and freeze for about 10 to 15 minutes. Add salt to ice water and stir.

Combine cold flour and cold butter in a large bowl. Gently toss to combine. Add ice water to the flour-butter mixture, and toss together with your fingers, eventually pressing it together with your hands. You want the dough to form with no dry patches or crumbly parts, but you do not want to overwork it so much that you break down the butter completely. Otherwise, you will lose flakiness and your dough will become tougher. You want to see streaks, not clumps, of butter through the dough.

Divide the dough into two equal pieces and wrap them in plastic wrap. Chill for at least one hour before proceeding, or chill overnight. You could also freeze at this point for future use.

Grease a pie pan, and roll the bottom crust with 1 inch or so of overhang. Fill the pie with the mixture. In a small bowl, whisk the egg and water. This makes an egg wash. Brush the overhang with egg. Roll the top crust and lay it over the pie. Pinch and roll the crust under, forming a nice lip. Flute crust. Cut vent holes in the top.

At this point, you can freeze your pie, or bake it.

If baking the pie, refrigerate it for about 15 minutes to firm up the crust. Bake at 400 degrees for about 30 to 45 minutes. The crust should be golden, and the filling should register 165 degrees on a thermometer.

Baking Frozen Pie:

Thaw in the refrigerator overnight and proceed with the directions above. I sometimes bake these at 350 for about an hour.

Bio

Chef AJ Dixon grew up on Milwaukee’s south side. Her late mother, Susan, was a great influence in AJ becoming a chef. Susan loved food, and she loved to cook. Dixon grew up in the kitchen eating and cooking everything her mother created. Dixon was at her mother’s side cooking along with her. In 2000, she enrolled in the culinary arts program at Milwaukee Area Technical College. Graduating with a culinary degree in 2002, AJ cooked all over the city of Milwaukee until following her dream and opening Lazy Susan MKE. It operated from 2014-23.

Amanda "AJ" Dixon

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