O Canada!

When we first visited Canada as tourists many years ago, we saw "poutine" as one of the myriad offerings in the Food Court of a neighbourhood shopping mall. Curious, we shared an order between the two of us and weren't overly impressed by the combination of soggy oily fries, overly salty gravy the color of wood varnish (and about as much flavour) and bright yellow plastic cheese grated over it.

Perhaps our palates were not used to this particularly Canadian dish? We asked the Canadians who were hosting us and the response was: "poutine? POUTINE? you ate poutine ??" (roll eyes) "Sooo unhealthy!!"

Well, that was a while ago and since then we have tried a few more plates of the stuff, a few good, mostly bad. And learnt that you should not have grated cheese in poutine (sacrilege!)

But what IS poutine anyway? Well, as far as ingredients go, it has to have potato in the form of fries, real cheese curd - the type that squeaks when you bite into it and most importantly, a really good gravy, the type only your mom can make (if she is French Canadian).

According to several sauces (pardon the pun), it was invented in Quebec in the 1950s when a customer at the restaurant Lutin Qui Rit wanted to have french fries to go, and also by the way, could he have some cheese curds and gravy along with it. The restaurateur was reported to have said "ca va faire un maudite poutine" (That's going to make a damn mess).

So to celebrate out having been in Canada for 2 years, we decided to make a genuine home version of this dish. A healthy version, so as not to freak out out health conscious friends. Real cheese curd we obtained from our local supermarket, low fat oven baked fries and a lower fat, lower sodium home made gravy.

"Our Poutine"
1 bag sqeaky cheese curds about 450g
1 recipe low fat over baked fries
1 pint gravy
 

Oven - baked chips (not french fries)
large baking potatoes - I use all purpose, but  Yukon Gold is really tasty if you can get them

• Wash, scrub and peel if desired, cut into thick chips
• Blanch in boiling salted water (1 tsp salt to 1.5L water) for 10min
• Drain & pat dry
• Toss in a bowl with a sprinkling of olive oil, freshly ground sea salt and pepper
• Don't worry if chips get a rough surface - that will become a wonderful crunchy coating
• Lay on a well greased heated baking tray in a single layer*
• Bake in pre-heated oven 400F for 20min, turning over halfway**
• If chips are not brown at the end of cooking time, stick them under the broiler till desired brown-ness.

* place the baking tray in the oven while it is being heated up
** If you have a touch of Obsessive - Compulsiveness, you might turn each chip individually, I just use a fish slice / spatula

Home made gravy

• 1 Tabsp ketchup
• 1 tsp Worcestershire  sauce*
• 1 tsp chicken stock powder*
• 1 tsp beef stock powder*
• 1 Tabsp corn starch #
• 500ml water
• salt & pepper to taste
• tiny pinch smoked paprika
• 1/2 tsp dark soy sauce (for color)

Method:
combine all the ingredients in a saucepan, bring to boil, add more cornstarch if you want it thicker
* vegetarian version would omit these 3 items and use vegetable and mushroom stock powders and a teaspoon of nutritional yeast for more umami
# for a better "mouthfeel" and richer taste, make a traditional roux with butter and wheat flour


To Serve:
place warm fries in a deep dish, top with as much curd as you want, and as much gravy as you like!

The King of (Grilled) Mushrooms

"Chi mangia bene, vive bene" ... we learnt this phrase from a couple of incredible Italian nonagenarians last week. And how better to "mangia bene" than to eat King Mushrooms.

In our recent foray to Ferraro Foods we managed to get our hot little hands on what has become one of our favourite mushrooms - the King Trumpet Mushroom, otherwise known as Pleurotus eryngii. It's the largest of the oyster mushroom genus and oh my, does it provide a toothsome feast.

One of our favourite ways of cooking this mushroom is to slice it longitudinally into 3mm slices, marinade it overnight (or at least 3-4h), grill it and serve it on a bed of pasta aglio olio pepperoncino. As a rough guide, 1 large mushroom is good for 1 serving.

Grilled King Mushrooms
Ingredients:

3 large King Mushrooms

Marinade:

• 2 Tabsp Olive Oil
• 2 Tabsp Dark Soy Sauce
• 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
• 1/2 tsp dry mustard powder
• Freshly ground sea salt (amount depends on how salty your soy sauce is)
• Freshly ground black pepper

Method:

1. Combine all the ingredients of the marinade
2. Slice mushrooms lengthwise into 3mm thick slices
3. Pour marinade over the mushrooms
4. Turn mushrooms over periodically to ensure all surfaces are coated
5. Grill under a hot grill till nicely brown on both sides

While mushrooms are on the grill, prepare your pasta of choice

Pasta Aglio Olio Pepperoncino
Ingredients

• Pasta for 3
• 1 Tabsp finely chopped garlic
• 3-4 Tabsp olive oil
• 1 tsp chilli flakes
• 2 Tabsp finely chopped parsley

Method:

1. Prepare 3 portions of pasta according to package directions but make it very al dente
2. Whilst pasta is boiling, heat 3 Tabs olive oil in a skillet
3. Add the chopped garlic and chilli flakes and fry till garlic is fragrant but not brown
4. Drain pasta, reserving about 1.5 cups of pasta water
5. Add pasta to skillet, with about 1 cup of pasta water, add parsley and mix well with chilli - garlic mixture. 
6. Bring to boil and test pasta for done-ness (this is why you want to remove the pasta from the water when it is just short of "done" - cooking it in the sauce for another 2minutes or so makes it much tastier, without getting soggy. And if you have good "bronzato style" pasta, the sauce sticks on the rough surface and makes for a much tastier mouthful)

Serve mushrooms on top of pasta, top with a poached egg if desired and generous parmesan shavings. Mangia!

BBB Time!

It was World Cup 2014 final day and we were too busy watching to fix anything fancy. And we really didn't want to be slaving over a hot stove. Besides, it was waaay too hot outside and inside the house to be fixing anything fancy.

The easiest thing was to quickly put together some burgers and chips and have everything cook in the over at the same time.

Just in case you are looking for a recipe for juicy beef burgers - we made those 2 weeks ago but in our haste and greed to eat... we forgot to take pictures - so I'll post that in the near future...). These are vegetarian burgers and our chips are low fat, oven baked, not quite full fat, but certainly full flavour!

Black Bean Burgers (BBB

• 1.5 cups cooked black beans, well drained, roughly mashed with a fork*
• 1 Tabsp ketchup (Heinz of course!)
• 1 Tabsp nutritional yeast
• 1 tsp sweet paprika (smoked will give a nice char grilled flavour)
• 1 small carrot - grated
• 3 stalks celery - finely chopped
• 1 cup rolled oats
• 1 tsp crunchy deep fried shallots (from Asian supermarkets)
• 1 tsp crunchy deep fried garlic (from Asian supermarkets)
• 1 egg
• salt and pepper to taste (test fry a small batch)

*do not use a food processor - it becomes too mushy

Method:

• mix everything together and form into 4 patties - I used a 4"egg ring to help shape and pack the mixture in
• place on tray and refrigerate for an hour to firm up
• Bake in oven with chips - at 400F, for 15min, turning halfway to get both sides nice and brown

Oven - baked chips (not french fries)
large baking potatoes - I use all purpose, but  Yukon Gold is really tasty if you can get them

• Wash, scrub and peel if desired, cut into thick chips
• Blanch in boiling salted water (1 tsp salt to 1.5L water) for 10min
• Drain & pat dry
• Toss in a bowl with a sprinkling of olive oil, freshly ground sea salt and pepper
• Don't worry if chips get a rough surface - that will become a wonderful crunchy coating
• Lay on a well greased heated baking tray in a single layer*
• Bake in pre-heated oven 400F for 20min, turning over halfway**
• If chips are not brown at the end of cooking time, stick them under the broiler till desired brown-ness.

* place the baking tray in the oven while it is being heated up
** If you have a touch of Obsessive - Compulsiveness, you might turn each chip individually, I just use a fish slice / spatula

Maybe we should have had frankfurters and sauerkraut and beer... considering who won the World Cup! DFB Weltmeister!