Food Adventures

Food is a big part of the holidays for me. Being in a foreign country, I have experienced some unusual fare in the last month at parties.
First it was cod spread. Believe it or not this was pretty good. Salt cod, rinsed until it was only very salty, flaked up and then mixed with lots of garlic and some cream. Spread on crackers or a baguette as a snack. I was told this was a traditional thing except the garlic which is a modern addition.
Then it was moose sausages. These weren't all that moosey if you know what I mean. I expected them to be gamey like deer, but mostly they were like ground beef.
Tortierre was at the same party as the moose sausage, it was ground lamb and pork in a nice pastry, but a little dry for me.
Seal flipper pie. Yes, the LeXy TD insisted on this one. We found it at the apparently famous institution of Bidgoods Grocery in the Goulds. They have a licence to sell game and it is probably where the moose and the tortierre came from as they also have quite a specialty section. We went looking for mince meat for Christmas pie, but were unsuccessful. I think seal flipper must be an acquired taste. It was a traditional meat pie with chunks of veg and gravy and a thick bread crust on top, but instead of beef or chicken it was flipper. Just flipper the label said, we made a few jokes about dolphins and bought it for lunch. Studyboy described the taste as smoked liver. The texture was stringy like stew meat but the taste was a strong smoked liver with a soupcon of fish. LeXy and I finished ours off but didn't go back for seconds, Studyboy gave his to the dog. The dog LOVED it.
We bought partridge berries at Bidgoods too, in case we never found the mincemeat for pie. I have had fresh partridge berries before, because they grow in Nova Scotia, but we have so many nicer berries there that we don't bother with them like they do here. The partridge berry jam we bought at the farmers stall is nice on toast, but the frozen berries in a pie leave rather a tart taste on the back of the tongue. "Like cranberries trying to be blueberries' is how LeXy described them. Thinking that they were a relative of blueberries and cranberries I put lots of tapioca in the pie to sop up the extra juice. Partridge berries are not as juicy when cooked so we ended up with a really thick solid filling. A jam pie.
After several attempts to find real mincemeat, we found a jar imported from England at Auntie Crae's, another institution here in town. It essentially made raisin pie. Whenever I would ask for mincemeat at a butcher or deli counter, they would try to sell me ground beef. When I described what I was looking for, one woman pointed out that there are no deer in Newfoundland so I was not likely to find any. Good point.
We saw lots of bake apple preserves too, but they were pricey and one woman said they were difficult to pick so it was worth it to pay for them. I kept asking what exactly bake apples were but really didn't get a good explanation from anyone. A low growing berry was all the description I could elicit so I googled them. They are a ground cover version of a raspberry/blackberry cousin, but yellow when ripe. It must be the prickles that make them difficult to pick. Now that I know, I'll splurge out on a small jar.