Recipes: Rappie Pie, A Holiday Tradition
Rappie Pie is an Acadian dish that not even a lot of Acadians make. It's a thing that is getting lost. You take potatoes, you peel them, grate them, and squeeze all of the moisture out of them. And then you vacuum pack them and freeze these blocks of potato starch.
Back in the day, my grandmother would grate potatoes and squeeze them out – in almost like pillow cases – and hang them up in the rafters in the barn. Then you would keep them because once you get them out the moisture they won't ferment. And then you reconstitute it with hot chicken stock or a fish stock or rabbit stock – it depends on whatever you had.
My grandmother is an Acadian. When she grew up eating rappie pie, and it would be made with whatever they had. It might be mussels, salt cod, rabbit, beef shin or chicken, pigeon, or duck. Whatever it was. Our family always had chicken. You make a very gentle chicken stock. You boil a whole chicken and add only green onions - that's it. Not even a lot of salt. Then you take that boiling chicken stock and you reconstitute the potato, almost like a polenta. You stir and stir and stir. And then you take all the chicken meat off and you make it almost soupy. It looks very soupy, this potato mass. You pour that into a baking tray and you bake it. It's almost like a solidified chicken pot pie but with nothing in it except for chicken and potato. It’s a Matheson family thing. I kind of write about it in the book, where I'm from a very white nontraditional Canadian family. We don't have a lot of traditions except that one; it’s our only real food tradition.
When we first moved to Ontario, I really missed this meal. We didn’t go back to the Maritimes for almost four years when we first moved to Fort Erie. And this dish was one that always kept us connected and wouldn’t let us forget our Maritime blood and history.
Yield: Serves 8 to 10, Time: 6 1/2 hours prep
Please note: A rappie pie pan is a specialty item, so you will most likely have to use a deep cake pan. Do not use a glass pan; it must be a basic metal pan.
Ingredients
- 2 (3 to 4 pound/1.4 to 1.8 kg) whole chickens, quartered
- 2 onions, quartered
- 2 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
- 2 stalks celery, roughly chopped 1 bunch thyme
- 1 bunch parsley
- Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
- Potato base for rappie pie (recipe follows) or 2 frozen potato blocks
- 2 bunches green onions, sliced
- Cooking spray
- Molasses, for serving
- Hot sauce, for serving
Directions
In a large pot, place the chickens, onions, carrots, and celery. Cover with cold water, bring to a boil, and skim the scum that rises to the top. Add the thyme and parsley. Turn the heat down to low and simmer 3 hours.
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). Remove the chicken and let rest 15 minutes to cool so you can pick the meat off the bones. Leave the meat in large chunks—we will use all of it, light and dark. Strain all the chicken broth into another pot; season with salt until it’s tasty. Set the broth to a low boil.
Now, in a very large stainlesssteel bowl, place your potato base (recipe follows if you can’t find potato blocks). Add your hot chicken broth, 2 cups (480 ml) at a time, stirring it continuously with a large wooden spoon to form a dough. Keep adding chicken broth until it’s smooth, like thick cake batter.
If you can find the blocks, there are instructions on how much liquid to add. Basically, what liquid is taken from the potato is replaced by broth, so it’s important to get that balance. Add the green onions to the mixture. Once again, add salt until it tastes like a solidified chicken soup.
In a large well greased (Pam works best) rappie pie pan or stainless steel hotel baking pan, pour half the mixture. Layer the chicken on top, then layer with the remainder of the potato mixture. Bake until you get a golden crispy top, about 3 hours. It’s okay if it takes longer because you really can’t overcook this dish. Remove from the oven and allow to rest 20 to 30 minutes so it’s not soupy and has time to set.
Cut into squares and serve with molasses, hot sauce, or plain—the way I love it. Maybe add some salt and pepper. The edges, much like a lasagna, are the most sought after. Make sure you get a corner square!
To make your own base for rappie pie:
Peel and grate 20 pounds (9 kg) PEI potatoes very finely and then squeeze out all the liquid. What will be in that liquid? Mostly water but also a lot of starch. You must save all the liquid and starch, not to use but as a measure of what you need to put back in the remaining pulp to reconstitute it properly. It’s pretty cool to see the starch settle out of the liquid. (That’s what they used to use to starch shirts!)
The old school way to do this is to peel the potatoes and put them in a bucket of water so they don’t turn brown. Then finely grate a couple pounds at a time, put those gratings in cheesecloth, and wring out all the liquid you possibly can. This is very hard work.
Many devices have been made to take some of the work out of this, but today we have a machine that anyone can buy to do this: a juicer! Keep the dryish pulp for use, and keep the juice for measuring so you know how much liquid to put back. Cut your potatoes so they fit in the mouth of your juicer. Have a bowl handy to collect all the pulp and another bowl for the liquid. When all the potato is pulped, measure your liquid by volume. That is the amount of chicken broth you will add back to make the rappie pie mix.
Excerpted from Matty Matheson: A Coobkbook