My mom’s family, “Les Hurtubise”, congregate each new Year Day to my aunt Claire and uncle François’s house for as long as I can remember (so more than 50 years). Being a family of 14 children, there has always been a lot of people at this reunion. (I have 36 cousins on that side :)). Everyone would bring a dish to share with each other. My uncle Gilles who was a hunter, always brought his cipaille made with his kill from that year at the beginning and then from whatever he could find.

Pour ma famille les cousins et cousines Hurtubise, vous reconnaitrez ici la cipaille de mon oncle Gilles et j’espère que ça vous rappellera, comme à moi, d’excellents souvenirs de nos jours de l’An!!

This year, one of our good friend killed a moose and I decided that it was a perfect opportunity to try this recipe. I called my amazing 94 years old uncle, mon oncle Gilles in Quebec city and asked him for the recipe. It was so much fun listening to him telling me to put some of this and some of that!! Must have wapiti (what is that) and hare (can’t buy that) and pig skin at the bottom (can’t get that), some spices, you know spices, (okay but which one) etc…A call to my mom to the rescue!!

Last night my sister Anne-Marie came to make the pastry (her specialty) and my friend Alicia brought the moose and a grouse (what the heck, throw it in!!). I went to our local Angus Beef market who carries the best variety of wild game and bought some wild boar (instead of the hare), venison and elk. Mark (the fantastic owner) and I settled on wild boar bacon for the bottom of the pie to replace the pig skin.

So here it goes for the ingredients but as you can gather by now, anything goes!! We were making 2 very large roasting pans for our annual end of school dinner with friends and neighbours.

Ingredients (this is what I did on this particular day)

The meat should be cut in small cubes:

• 2 pounds of moose
• 2.5 pounds of wild boar
• 2 pounds of venison
• 2 pounds of elk
• 1 grouse (small bird and finicky to debone!!)
• 16 slices of wild boar bacon

Spices:

• bunch of parsley
• 2 tsp each of clove, cinnamon, salt, pepper, celery salt, fines herbs
• 3 tsp of paprika

• You also need some pie pastry and a lot of onions.  On this day, we used 10 medium size sweet onions.

What to do:

• Mix all these ingredients together in a large bowl. Hands work best 🙂
• The principle here is to layer like a lasagna.
• Place the bacon at the bottom to cover the pan.
• Put a layer of sliced onions to cover the bacon.
• Spread a layer of the meat mixture to cover the onion.
• Spread a layer of pastry.
• Then start again with onions, meat and pastry until you end with pastry. We stopped there as that was the depth of our pan but you can go on if you can!!

The whole mess goes in the oven at 250F all night!!! Cover it with aluminium for the night. When you are ready to serve later on for dinner, put it back for 30 minutes to warm up without the aluminium to brown the pastry.

Best served, of course, with ma tante Lucille’s catsup which is like a sweet and sour chili sauce. This recipe will be posted at some point also 🙂

We will enjoy tonight but it smells wonderful right now!!!