[Smashy the Hammer] [An Aspiring Luddite]
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An aspiring Luddite
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[Jeff Berry]
Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he migrated to the Fediverse. He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance. He hates cell-phones.

Poutine, Sort Of
3 January 2013
[Poutine]

This is another of those recipes that may get me lynched by purists. Poutine: French fries, cheese curds, gravy - sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? There are variations all over Canada and the Northeastern parts of the US of A. In Jersey there are places whose speciality is Disco Fries - fries, cheese and gravy - with other stuff on top of it. Toss some more protein on top of your Poutine (or Disco Fries) and it's nearly a complete meal. "Nearly" in that it's got no salad-like element whatsoever.

Culinarily, there is a certain resemblance to one of my favorite winter dishes, the gratin. I mean, potatoes and cheese, how can you go too far wrong with that as a base? But gratin sounds, if not haute exactly, at least like a legitimate part of a meal. Poutine (or Disco Fries even moreso) sounds at least a little like junk food.

I think it's the fries, really. To properly do fries, you need a deep fryer, and deep frying at home is a PITA and messy to boot. Baking a gratin, by contrast, seems pretty straightforward. Still, it seemed worth taking a stab at it. Of course, I'd want to use some home-made cheese for the topping, but lest you think I'm too snobby, we topped it with Spam. Low-sodium, naturally, after all, health first!

[Lots of pictures]

Poutine, Sort Of

The fries are the hard part. If you've got a deep fryer and want to do it that way, by all means, have at! Or you could punt over to frozen fries or something. Heck, use Tater Tots if it floats your boat. However, I went with "oven fries" which were adequate for the task at hand. If you're coming with me on that journey, read on, gentle reader!

Cut your potatoes into fairly thin fries, put them on a baking sheet and lightly coat them with olive oil. Put them into a pretty hot oven, around 400F, for about twenty minutes. Keep an eye on them, though, lest they burn. The idea, of course, is to get them browned on the outside, but not blackened, and soft on the inside.

While they're in the oven, make the gravy. If you make your own stock, it's a doddle. At least it is if you follow my theory of stock making, which includes leaving the layer of fat on top of your stock. You can see the stock in the picture to the right still has some fat on top of it, that's because most of the rest of it went into the saucier for the gravy.

Let me digress on that point for a moment, if I may. Whenever I cook or break down or bone meats, I save the bones. At some point, I throw them all in a pot and let them simmer into stock. Recently, that is to say within the last few months, I made both something with pork and at least one duck. Hence the duck and pork stock. I am not a fanatic, not even an abbreviated fan, of excessive straining of stock. I put it through a colander, to be sure, but that's about it. My stock, therefore, is not as limpidly clear as it might be, but honestly I don't care. This also means that when it has cooled and sat in the fridge, the fat solidifies on the top. Some folks might discard that fat. They are fools! Fools, I say! That fat cap is what makes the making of gravy so easy. You simply use that fat for your roux, then the stock for the liquid. Easy-peasy. To return to the recipe ...

Put a couple of tablespoons of fat in a pan and melt it, unless you're using something liquid at room temperature, of course. Add about the same amount of flour, or a touch less, and make a roux. That is, stir it all together and keep stirring fairly constantly until the flour has cooked a bit. I didn't need a particularly dark gravy so I didn't cook the roux too long. Add some of your liquid and whisk or stir thoroughly, then add some more and repeat, then add the rest. Don't just dump it all in at once or you risk the dreaded Lumpy Gravy Problem. Heat just to simmer to thicken. Taste and correct the seasonings as you like. I just used salt and pepper, but chacun à son goût. In a traditional Poutine gravy, I hear, some vinegar might be added to help cut the heaviness of the rest of the dish.

Cut your spam, if you're spamming the dish, and grate your cheese if you are using a hard cheese. I used a soft home-made cheese, but that's not required. Move your fries from the baking sheet into an oven proof serving dish. Top with the spam and then the cheese. Pop under the broiler for just a moment or two to get the cheese started on being melted. Remove, pour on the gravy, and serve.

A salad would have been nice, but instead I sautéed some leeks to serve with it and that was good, too.


© 2013 Jeff Berry
The Aspiring Luddite