For some people, holiday baking means shortbread and gingerbread cookies. Christiane Bouchard, however, rolls out the pastry. Like many French Canadians, she makes pies for the Christmas season not fruit pies, but tourtií¨re.

The savoury meat pie is traditionally enjoyed in la belle province on Christmas Eve, but it also has a devoted following here in Vancouver. Bouchard can testify: a nanny by trade, she's made tourtií¨res as a hobby for at least 10 years to sell at the annual Christmas market at the Centre Culturel Francophone de Vancouver. "It's become very popular, so I have to make more and more every year," she tells the Straight in her Vancouver kitchen, which is filled with the heady aroma of sautéed onions, pork, cinnamon, and cloves. This year, she made about 100 tourtií¨res for the December 1 fair.

Bouchard explains that there are many different versions of tourtií¨re. One is a double-crusted pie filled with ground pork and spices. Bouchard uses a mix of ground pork and veal, and spices it with cinnamon and cloves. An elegant Christmas tree motif is cut into the top crust, and she dusts it with a mixture of fleur de sel and herbes de Provence, which brighten the flavour. "That's my trademark," she says.

But while residents of some regions of Quebec would consider this a genuine tourtií¨re, Bouchard hails from Charlevoix, northeast of Quebec City, where this dish would simply be called a meat pie. Here, tourtií¨re refers to a Dutch oven or casserole filled with small cubes of meat mixed with onions, garlic, and sometimes broth, slowly baked under a cloak of pastry. Game is the traditional meat often moose, wild rabbit, or deer. Traditionally, tourtií¨re "was very inexpensive because people went hunting", Bouchard says. The dish could serve a big family, and could be stretched further by incorporating potatoes. She notes that these deep-dish tourtií¨res remain popular in that region, and that assorted game is widely available at Quebec supermarkets.

Loyce Bélanger makes this type of tourtií¨re at her Vancouver home. She grew up in Chicoutimi, in the Saguenay Lac-Saint-Jean region, and says that the secret to a good one is marinating the meat all day in seasoned chicken broth, and then cooking it at a low temperature for about 20 hours. "If you cook it slowly, all the flavour [of the seasonings] goes into the meat," she explains by phone. She pops the dish in at 9 at night, reduces the heat the next morning, and it's ready by dinnertime. "It smells so good in your house," she says enthusiastically. "You wake up during the night and you can smell it in your bedroom." She loves it so much that she makes it year-round, albeit with cubed beef and pork, not game. "It makes me remember Quebec," she says.

"Tourtií¨re, to me, was really comfort food growing up," says Cassis Bistro chef and owner Ben Cí´té, who was raised near Trois-Rivií¨res and elsewhere in Quebec. On his cellphone while putting the final touches on his just-opened Lunchbox natural-food outlet in Oakridge Centre, he tells the Straight that tourtií¨re is like turkey: eating it isn't restricted to the holidays, but it is associated with them. Cassis Bistro (420 West Pender Street) will be serving a version throughout December.

Savoury City caterer Donna Wadsworth says tourtií¨re was also part of her family tradition in Toronto. "It was a Christmas Eve thing," she says by phone from her Fraser Street office. "I love the spice of it all," she adds, referring to the cloves, allspice, and cinnamon. Savoury City offers a nine-inch, double ­-crusted pork tourtií¨re with potatoes and onions for $30. (You can order the frozen pies in advance at 604-875-8484.) Wads ­worth likes to serve it with a festive red-and-green salad made of escarole, curly endive, and radicchio tossed with toasted walnuts, sun-dried cranberries or pomegranate seeds, and a vinaigrette. "It's the perfect meal."

Frozen tourtií¨res ready to bake can be found at La Baguette et l'Echalote at Granville Island. "I grew up [in Montreal] with a tourtií¨re made with pure pork: no potatoes, no flour, nothing to bind it," says co-owner Louise Turgeon by phone from the bakery. They sell "hundreds and hundreds" of tourtií¨res at Christmas, simply spiced with onion, garlic, thyme, and cinnamon. An eight-inch pie costs $18.50. (Order several days in advance at 604-684-1351.) "Serve it with a nice mango chutney," Turgeon advises.

Asked about her Christmas Eve traditions, Turgeon laughs and replies: "My tradition is we work like crazy." She starts at 3 a.m. on the busiest day of the year (the market closes at 4 p.m.), and she finishes around 7 p.m. But then it's time to relax. "We always grab a tourtií¨re and a bottle of champagne," she says. "Then we go to bed."

For Canadian Living's version of the classic tourtií¨re, see the Classic Tourtií¨re recipe.