time for Canadian cuisine

[iverglas]

Myself, I'm a regular whitebread wasp Canadian (all four grandparents born in England), although what I cook is heavily Indian and Chinese. But I like

POUTINE.

The story of poutine:
http://www.apnmag.com/Northern%20Lights/past%20stories/Poutine/Poutine.htm
There are many entertaining poutine sites on the net:
http://www.avivalasvegas.com/Pages/poutinetalk6.htm
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/2/5/171112/7741

And every Canadian knows of the George W. Bush - poutine connection:
http://www.pressrepublican.com/Archive/2000/03_2000/03102000pb.htm

George W. Bush can thank his lucky lone stars that he was ambushed by Rick Mercer and not Marg Delahunty, the Warrior Princess.

If you are asking yourself right now "who are Rick Mercer and Marg Delahunty?" you probably have not seen or heard about how your Republican presidential aspirant was made to look ridiculous by the fearless crew from the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.’s political satire program, "This Hour Has 22 Minutes."

Obviously eager to pick on Mr. Bush’s reputed lack of familiarity with the names of world leaders, Mercer, one of "This Hour"’s four smart-alecky hosts, managed to put a question to the Texas governor during a Michigan primary campaign stop.

"Question from Canada!" shouted Mercer, as Bush was handshaking past. "Prime Minister Jean Poutine says you’re the man to lead the United States into the next millennium," says Mercer, knowing flattery is the most delicious bait. "That so?" says a beaming Bush, striding purposefully into the trap and delivering a well-briefed bite on the importance of free trade with Canada.

The best place to get it is of course at a roadside chip wagon, but up here, even New York Fries does a pretty mean poutine:



(Somebody's photoshopped the NY Fries decoration off the container in that one.)

Asking Google Images for poutine is always fun; because of the various spellings of this guy's name, he pops up more frequently than the québécois delicacy does:


Vladimir Poutine

This site:
http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/%7Egedetil/poutine.shtml
has a link to how to say it:
http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/%7Egedetil/poutine.au

Kinda "poo-tin", except the "t" before "i" in Quebec French is very sibilant.

So, to make it yourself, you need:

1. French fries
- nice big thick well-browned ones. You do *not* want pale skinny frozen ones like Macdonalds makes its poutine out of up here.

2. Cheese curds
- buy them in a bag; I dunno, maybe they aren't that easy to get everywhere. If not, substitute a soft mild cheese, like a very mild cheddar or mozzarella, and grate it up.

You can order them online! (it says these ones are Muenster):
http://www.wisconsinmade.com/wiscmade/dept.asp?find_spec=Decatur+Dairy&IMAGE1.x=18&IMAGE1.y=15



3. Poutine gravy
- this I'll certainly bet you can't buy in a can. You can mix canned beef gravy and canned barbecued-chicken sauce and approximate it. Or you could go nuts and make your own:
http://newtimes.rway.com/1997/111297/eats.htm

Put the French fries on a plate. Put the cheese curds on top of the French fries. Pour the gravy on top of it all. The gravy melts the cheese curds, and you have poutine.

Me, being so English-Canadian, I still put vinegar on it when it comes out the chip wagon's window.



Okay, enough self-deprecating Canadian culinary humour. When I come back (probably not tomorrow), I'll have recipes for:

- my grandmother's butter tarts (USAmerican drool for them once they've tried them; I've found that even the packaged ones from the 7-11 work well as bait on stateside men) -- the English-Canadian version of Quebec's sugar pie and the southern US's pecan pie;



- a fancified and labour-intensive and absolutely delicious variation on tourtière, the meat pie traditionally served on Christmas Eve in Quebec;



- Nanaimo bars, something I've never actually made but occasionally buy at bakeries and make myself ill on.



Canadians tend to have sweeter tooths than USAmericans, and share our taste for sweet milk chocolate with the Brits and their Cadbury's. The Canadian version of a Hershey Bar is quite different from its original version in the US, although I think that the new sweeter/creamier version is what I was eating there when I drove south a couple of years ago too:

http://www.cybercandy.co.uk/aaasmt/index.php/url_pmet3/xdbc_36/dbtc_2/pic_1/add_44112/stc_0

Canadian Hershey Milk Chocolate Bar

One of the most debated topics at Cybercandy is whether the American Hershey Bar is the most delicious chocolate bar ever invented or whether it's the most awful confectionery product ever to insult the name of candy. There are hundreds of review from customers debating it's merits and failings. The Canadian version is a very different product which few will have reason to criticise. A bar of the most delicious creamy chocolate imaginable.

I'm afraid I'm not much up on Newfoundland delicacies like seal flipper pie, but should anyone have requests, I can consult. ;)

[eleny]

1. The first time I had meat pies and tasted vinegar on fries...

....was in Canada. Oh - and drinking cider out of teacups, too. That was in a crepes shop in Quebec. You just don't forget wonderful firsts!

[iverglas]

3. just don't ask for vinegar for your *chips* in Las Vegas

They'll ignore you until your fries are cold, and then bring you a cruet of red wine vinegar.

Ghack.

In upstate NY, in a little diner on Lake Champlain, on the other hand, I remember being brought white vinegar without even asking. (Good enough, though malt's better, and white's about all you get in restaurants here anyhow.) I didn't know whether they'd sneaked a peak at my licence plates, or it was a spillover/hangover culinary tradition in the region.

It's one of those yucky effects of economic/cultural imperialism that the Canadian youth of today mostly put ketchup on their chips.

[Stinky The Clown]

2. My experience in Canada has always been positive.

Foodwise and otherwise. Great appreciation for food. Great restaurants. Perhaps even more international and ethnically pure than what's found in the US.

The Movenpick Marches are maybe the best restaurant concept ever, bar none, anywhere in the world. I also love greasy, honest-to-Queeny fish and chips. There was a fish and chips shop on Yonge St. in Toronto, run by immigrant Brits, I freqented at least once a week when I was commuting to Toronto some years back.

This past September Sparkly and I were in Toronto for a conference of my professional association (foodservice consultants - so you **know** the food was important to us!). They did a very high end Canadian dinner for us, complete with Canadian wines. Wonderful! By the way, Tim Horton's CEO was our keynote speaker. A very funny guy!

And can you ask for a more highly developed and pure, unique cuisine than that of Montreal (and all of Quebec, really)?

Oh Canada!

[iverglas]

4. that's what I was going to get around to asking

Great appreciation for food. Great restaurants. Perhaps even more international and ethnically pure than what's found in the US.

Two years ago I had to drive from the Montreal vicinity to Florida to deal with my dad's stuff there after he died (at home). I arranged to meet a few on-line friends on the way down -- DC, Baltimore, and two in North Carolina. We wanted to do regional cuisine -- I hadn't been south in over a decade.

None of 'em seemed to know what we were on about, even though they'd seemed enough like us that they'd be foodies like we are up here. They just weren't. And we couldn't find anything but chain restaurants as far as the eye could see. It seems that regional cuisine is dead on the restaurant scene -- that outside the haute-er regional cuisine centres, places like New Orleans and the West Coast where it's an art form, or metropolises like NYC and Chicago that still harbour cultural diversity, they've paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

You're old enough to remember different, right? Is the loss I noted real (like, just no independent, authentic southern-cooking restaurants in the Carolinas and thereabouts, for example), and if so isn't it a horrible shame?

Now, what we have up here isn't necessarily "regional" cuisine, true; it's more a reflection of the cultural diversity, like in NYC. Canadians generally eat pretty much the same stuff as you guys in the US. But "ethnic" cuisine is more prevalent. I, for instance, live in "Chinatown" in my medium-sized city (about 1,000,000 in the entire metropolitan area, counting a couple of municipalities). And I can eat really good stuff from every ethnicity under the sun, mostly within walking distance -- Somali, Ethiopian, Vietnamese, Polish, Indian, Afghan, Mexican (and its multiple variations), and so on. The same is true in much smaller cities in Ontario. The one thing we're chronically short on right here is Greek, and a few years ago I was disgusted to see that in Montreal's Main, the Greek had all gone nouveau fresh-fish and we couldn't get moussaka anywhere.

But Montreal's French restaurants, yes indeed. Yum.

And I trust the Tim Horton's CEO provided you with the full range of Timbits for your coffee break!

[eleny]

6. Sounds like your online friends were way deep in the dark

The South is a wealth of good food. But I don't look for restaurants necessarily. I look for stands with signs that say "BBQ" or just "Eat" and have a table or two outside. Maybe a little mobile eatery where they pass the food out to you from a window on the side and some guy is bbq'ing all sorts of meats in a smoker/grill off to the side. And then there's the vegetable stands with fresh things like vine ripened tomatoes. You have to take a meandering trip off the main roads.

It takes a little adventuring but it seems we always run into great food. Like when we were out on eastern Long Island this Spring. It was fogged to the max, we were literally lost and there was this this diner that appeared out of nowhere. Turned out to be a local eatery that specialized in of all things - turnip dishes. I had the best soft shell crab dinner. The place was packed.

Your friends couldn't have been much into good, local eats or they would have known the good spots. They're everywhere.

[Stinky The Clown]

8. There is good, honest, regional food almost anywhere in the US

if you know where and what to look for. You're spot on, eleny.

It is certainly true that large portions of our country have been converted to consumption zones with chain stores and restaurants and places to park cars. But the real stuff survives and is, in my estimation, thriving.

Look for small local places. Ask the locals where they eat. Eschew the large and touristy. Avoid the chains. And look for food you know to be indigenous to a given area. Steamed crabs will be hard to find in Des Moines, but there's a joint on every other corner in Baltimore. Go to Maryland's Eastern Shore for some great fried chicken. But don't expect it to be Southern Fried Chicken. It isn't. There must be a bazillion places in East Carolina to get white BBQ. You want great ribs? Go to Memphis. They're unique there. If you like 'em with more saucy, the one's in St. Louis are likely the king. I sure hope Arthur Bryant's is still there. It was a tired, semi-dirty, very unpretentious joint but the food was second to none. No beverage service; just vending machines. Everything came with white bread and they let their home made sauce ferment in 5 gallon glass jars in a sunny window ..... blup ........ blup ....... blup.

The best steak I ever ate was in a joint in Petaluma, CA. I went there with a group and don't recall the name. It was a barn (literally) converted to a beer joint. Upstairs they have a banquet hall that seats maybe 200. The steaks are local and absolutely to die for. Who'da thunk it?

I remember years ago eating at some seafood joint on a pier at the end of a sandbar on Merritt Island, in Florida. The lobster (Florida spiny lobster, not Maine "Lawbstah") was incredible. Fresh, sweet and buttery.

Ever hear of a fish taco? They're all the rage in parts of San Diego. And they're worth seeking out.

So yeah, we still have what I would have to classify as local, indigenous food and restaurants. But they're not on the Interstates and they're usually not in suburban shopping malls. They're next door, and down the road, and across town, and out there about 6 miles ..... all ya need to do is ask ..... a local.

[Stinky The Clown]

9. Arthur Bryant's BBQ is in Kansas City not St. Louis

My bad .... but hey .... I'm old. Gimme a break!

[eleny]

12. One fun thing to do in St. Louis

Well, besides finding the Italian neighborhood and having great Italian food - We've gone though St. Louis many times traveling east on Interstate 70. And I love that stretch of highway. The local drivers are great and I enjoy the experience each and every time. Along the way, you can see the levee and some riverboats. I really like going to have a cup of coffee at the McDonald's restaurant on the riverboat. I know it's McD's and all. But that stop is almost mandatory for me. I fondly remember moving my mom to Colorado from Florida. She wanted to have a driving trip instead of flying. On the way, we stopped to have a bite on the riverboat. Coffee on the Mississippi.

See you all later. Yard cleanup is calling. Warmish here today - a sunny, clear sky day that's nice to be outdoors.

[eleny]

10. Speaking of lobsters and also Canada

I was on a trip to Canada with a couple of friends. This was back in the mid '70s before I moved west. We stopped in St. Andrews in New Brunswick. We meandered around and drove towards the water on this one street - just to have fun getting lost. At the end of the street was a fish market. We stopped in and the guy had just steamed some lobsters. They were on ice in his display. He put three of them in a big plastic bag, gave us a hammer and directed us to a picnic table outside. It was early October, so nice and crispy out there. The table had a view of the water. It was the best lobster experience I ever had and I've had plenty.

Wherever you go, you can make some great eatery finds if you just get lost.

[Stinky The Clown]

7. Timbits from wall to wall

Yup, they did the morning break one day. It was great fun ... and .... ::::urp::::: ..... s'cuse me! .... :) .... very good.

As to food down here, I'll tack onto eleny's start at this, below. She's right on the money.

[eleny]

11. Remember when you said you flew into DIA?

Well, just east of the airport is the town of Bennett, Colorado. Our contractor lives there. He told us about a great restaurant where you eat outside. You pick out your steak and they grill it for you out there. A total outdoor experience and he said it's so much fun. I think they may just do this on the weekends. I'll have to find out as I want to try it out. We live way on the west side, so it's a 30 mile trek. But we lived out east when I first moved here and I'm sentimental about the eastern plains and amber waves of grain.

[Stinky The Clown]

13. That sounds like a great place!

Many, many (many) years ago, I ran a small country club and small inn owned by an insurance company in Ohio. Every summer they brought in agents by the busload every week for two days of golf and sales meetings. For their one overnight we did what they called a "Steak Fry". The steaks were all laid out in pans. The guest would come up and point to a steak and the server would put it on a paper plate and hand it to him. They then went out to a line of grills and cooked their own steaks. Since all the steaks were 1" thick Porterhouse, the only fight was for the ones with the fattest filet section! Mix a bunch of sweaty, drunk midwestern insurance agents with fire and raw meat and you had one HELL of a sight! :) Great Leader Chimpus Khan would have fit right in!

We live just outside Baltimore. When we lived in the city, we used to get a local thing called "pit beef", which is nothing more than beef rounds cooked slowly over an open fire. Each summer (this still goes on today) it seems every corner bar and grill would set up a plywood shack on the sidewalk or in the side yard of their place and do pit beef. You tell them what you want (size and rare, medium, or well) and they cut it for you. It is served on a nice roll (like a kaiser roll). The traditional toppings are horseradish and onions, salt and pepper. You ate it right there because it would be ice cold by the time you took it home.

We have a place nearby here in the 'burbs, but it looks more like a Mickey-D than a place with a plywood roof and smoke all around! The beef's pretty much as good, though. But it isn't the same unless eaten on rude wooden picnic tables all stained by everyone else who ate there!

[grasswire]

15. one of the more memorable evenings...

...of my life was spent at Bertha's Mussels in Fells Point. I assume you've been there -- hasn't everyone? On the night when the jazz band plays (Bertha's Rhythm Kings) the tiny, eccentric bar is just more fun than humans should be allowed to have. I don't like mussels, but I wasn't there for the food anyhoo.

[Stinky The Clown]

16. Bertha's is great!

I took a bunch of food folks there one night after a work session. They loved it. It just one of those cool, totally unique, totally idiosyncratic places that thrive but could never be replicated.

We almost always take out of town guests there if they're gunna be here more than one or two nights.

[bearfan454]

5. I've been to Canada 3 times.

Every time I loved it. Walleyes are superb.

[ironflange]

14. We can get walleye (aka pickerel) at Costco!

In Calgary. Yummy fish.