A Canadian Delicacy

Canada may not be the first place that comes to mind when you think of interesting foods, but they do claim one little gem…

Poutine.

What is poutine? you ask. Gravy on french fries. Eh?

Basically fries with cheese and gravy. This may not sound like much, but it is a big deal in my neck of the woods. Even if it is something that no one has heard of anywhere else in the world. Really, as close as the southern reaches of my own state are ignorant of this culinary oddity.

There are lots of variations of poutine, but its traditionally made with cheese curd and beef gravy.

Poutine

Making gravy is an interesting activity for me. It wasn’t until I stopped trying to measure everything that I started to make good gravy.

Many years ago, the Mister and I were hosting his parents for our first Thanksgiving in our own place. We made the turkey, I made a fancy pumpkin soup, even an apple pie from scratch. When our guests were settled at the table, located in our tiny kitchen, I started to make the gravy. For starters, I was trying desperately to follow my mother’s recipe exactly. I was also trying to use a pyrex dish on the stove (hot tip: don’t.). Exactly what you may be thinking would happen did…the pyrex shattered and hot glass and gravy went everywhere! I mean…EVERYWHERE! Many lessons were learned that day, and luckily no one was seriously injured.

My recent attempts at gravy being much more successful, I decided to make homemade poutine. I started by slow roasting a beef roast all day long. Once that finished cooking, I oven roasted some potato wedges. And while those were in the oven, I used the juices from the roast to make up some delicious gravy. Having not been able to find cheese curd, I settled on fresh mozzarella pearls. Combine all the ingredients and you end up with something truly amazing.

TLDR:I spent all day cooking a roast so that I could make gravy so that I could make poutine…and oh boy, it was worth it!