Butter tarts and tourtière: Jonny Lake’s recipes for Canada Day

Two all-time Canadian favourites to celebrate Canada Day: a proper, weighty pie of ham hock and spiced mince, and traditional tarts with a buttery, caramelised currant fillingCanada is a vast country with a diverse population, both indigenous and immigrant. That makes it hard to come up with a definitive answer to the question: what is a typical Canadian dish? However, butter tarts and tourtière will both be recognisable to most Canadians, and are a great way to celebrate the country’s food on Canada Day on July 1. The celebrations usually revolve around the barbecue, with burgers, ribs and hotdogs always winners and bright yellow mustard always present, but there’s no reason a big meat pie and butter tarts can’t also feature, not least because they’re always a good idea at any time of year. At Labombe, the wine bar at my restaurant Trivet in London, we’ll be celebrating Canada Day with lobster rolls, poutine and bloody caesars, a very Canadian drink in which the tomato juice in a bloody mary is replaced with tomato and clam-flavoured Clamato; keeping on theme for dessert, we’ll also be baking a few blueberry pies along with those obligatory butter tarts. Continue reading...