Thursday 12 April 2012

Poutine

Who would have thought? In fact, what were they thinking?

A combination of fries, curdled cheese and gravy?!




A popular dish in Quebec, Canada it is!

I personally find it strange as the French are renowned for their fine cuisine and delicate presentation. Surely it must be unlike them to throw some fries and cheese together before topping it off with a dollop of hot gravy! How sloppy! Maybe it's the Irish influence? I mean, they do like their potatoes, right?
 ;) winking
The history of its making has been an interesting read. The word translates to "mess", and its creation is only less than 50 years ago. Apparently, a guy walked into a French takeaway shop and asked for curdled cheese to be added to his order of fries. The owner then told him that "it is going to be messy!", but he took no heed and went away pleased. This soon became a popular snack (before low-carb, Atkins and low-cal diet fads, of course). But it was restauranter Jean-Paul Roy who added velouté sauce to it as well as a patent in the 1950s! This  invention slowly spreads and various modifications of tomato sauces, cheese sauces and even BBQ sauces!

We did enjoy the dish very much when in Quebec City in 2010 for our honeymoon. Absolutely brilliant!

Bringing this back to New Zealand, we decided to make our own version of poutine just the other night! We had some leftover of beef stew and feta cheese. To make it more kiwi, we have used oven baked kumara chips. That was dinner with a bed of salad on the side!




It was pretty good!