Category: life

As it’s Canada Day weekend, I thought it would be appropriate to prepare one of Canada’s favourite dishes. It’s the dish that originated in Quebec, is beloved by pub-goers all across Canada, and reviled by cardiologists everywhere. The dish is the magnificent poutine.

Poutine is beautiful in its simplicity. Dump some crispy fries on a plate, top them with cheese curds, and pour gravy or other sauce over top. What it lacks in beauty, it makes up for in flavour. And grease. And salt. And arterial blockages.

To construct this cheesy concoction, I enlisted one of Canada’s leading experts on poutine, Chef Stacie Bee. I checked her credentials, and she has, in fact, not only been to Montréal, but has also actually eaten poutine. Furthermore, Stacie is an expert not only in poutine, but also in bacon, which became a small but vital component in our construction.

As culinary experts agree, any food is made better by putting it on a stick: pizza on a stick; fries and bacon on a stick; spaghetti and meatballs on a stick; scorpion, seahorse, and silkworm larvae on sticks; and more! As chef and author, Anthony Bourdain, is fond of saying, everything tastes better on a stick.

And this is how Chef Stacie and I decided to prepare… poutine-on-a-stick.

Ingredients:

• Crispy french fries
• Cheese curds
• Gravy or poutine sauce (fresh is best, but we used powder)
• Delicious, crispy bacon

Preparation:

1. Put fries and curds on the stick.
2. Put sauce on the stick.
3. Sprinkle bacon bits on the stick.

The finished product:

Truly, there is no meat more delicious than thick-cut bacon, and no sweet no richer than pure, dark chocolate. What meat-and-sweet pairing could be more natural than to combine the two?

Today, I did it. I brought pig and chocolate together in a sweet and salty chocomeatgasm. On a stick.

Ingredients:

• 15 oz semi-sweet dark chocolate
• 4 oz white chocolate
• 15 strips of thick-cut bacon
• bamboo skewers

Preparation:

1. Soak the bamboo skewers for a while, then skewer the bacon.
2. Put them on a rack in a roasting pan for 30 minutes at 350F until crispy.
3. Remove from oven and let them cool.
4. Melt the dark chocolate and smear it liberally on the bacon until no meat is showing through.
5. Put the skewers in the fridge until the chocolate sets.
6. Melt the white chocolate and drizzle lightly over the dark chocolate.
7. Put the skewers back in the fridge until it sets.

The result:

This recipe is actually almost identical to my regular chocolate cookie recipe, but substituting bacon for the eel meat.

The Ingredients

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 crapload chocolate chips
• 1 crapload chopped crispy delicious bacon
• 2 cups flour

Assembly

1. Combine softened butter with the white and brown sugar. Mash ’em together until it’s an even consistency.
2. Add the eggs and vanilla and bash them around until you have a nice brownish mush.
3. Dissolve a half teaspoon of baking soda in a teaspoon of hot water (fizzzz!) and add it to the brownish mush with the salt.
4. Add the chocolate chips and bacon bits.
5. Add the flour a half cup at a time and really bash it around. Get in there with your fists if you have to, until that cookie dough is battered into submission.
6. Put on a non-stick cookie sheet in small balls, spaced well apart. Stick a chunk of crispy bacon on top of each ball for appearances. Bake for about 10 to 12 minutes. Not too long or they get dry and tasteless.
7. Let them cool, then melt the chocolate in a double-boiler or the microwave. Drizzle the melted chocolate over the cookies and let them set in the fridge.
8. Eat.

The Finished Product