Recipe: Comments & recipe for POUTINE, for Karen

POUTINE:

Homemade fries, not frozen but ones actually cut off of potatoes in fat sticks, are fried golden, and placed in a bowl containing a handful of a particular type of cheese curd called "fromage en grain". It is not surprisingly a cheese named Kingsley, native to the Warwick area, mild, stringy and white, but not mozzarella or cheddar, similar perhaps to Monterey Jack, but shaped in many small lumps. More of this cheese is dumped on top of the fries, and then the entire melting mass is covered with preferably homemade and extremely hot brown beef gravy. The pile as it cools quickly coagulates into something resembling
cement, and must be scarfed in haste, but not so soon that you burn the roof of your mouth.

There are some famous and not-so-famous variations on this theme, although the fries and cheese are considered the Traditional Constant.

o "Poutine du Lac Long" has chopped beef and fried onions added.
o "Poutine Italienne" has, as one might suspect, spaghetti sauce instead.
o "Galvaude" is a poutine with chunks of chicken and green peas mixed in.

The concoction, whatever its ingredients, is admittedly hard on the stomach, an experience not helped by the fact that the traditional liquid accompaniment is lots and lots of beer. These potatoes are for couch potatoes, and exercise of any sort alter consumption is not recommended.