Poutine, or, Those Crazy Folks from Canadia

Posted by me on Saturday, the 30th day of December, anno domini 2006 at 10:55 PM, local time.

Ok, so I was reading Pam‘s blog post about Her Trip to Ottawa, and What She Found There and decided I had to look up this Poutine substance which is all the rage up Nort’. And, not that anyone cares or would be at all surprised, but the standard mixture of french fries, cheese curds, and gravy does not sound all that appetizing. Gravy does not go on cheese. That’s just the way it is.

However, reading further (on good old wikipedia), I discovered a variation that actually sounds quite good: Italian Poutine. Its just like normal Poutine, but instead of gravy (Gravy does not go on cheese, etc., etc.) you use spaghetti sauce, possibly with meat. That actually sounds quite excellent, and I may have to try it sometime.

One link led to another, of course, and soon I was on the wikipedia page about Bolognese Sauce, a variant (and possibly the original version) of the standard meat sauce they use on spaghetti. In this version, there is far less tomato sauce, and instead they first fry up the meat (not ground beef: minced beef! Seriously! Doesn’t that sound good in general?) in a olive oily / buttery / oniony / garlicy mixture, then add some white wine and reduce that for a while. Then you add a small amount of tomato paste and stock and simmer that for about 2-4 hours to get the meat to fall apart entirely. Right before you are done cooking it, add a bit of cream or milk.

I think it sounds fantastic, and I am thinking of trying to make it sometime soon here to see what it tastes like. I can only imagine that it will be excellent.

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