from-scratch poutine

a bowl of homemade poutine

Yesterday Ben, Emily, Kris and I made a from-scratch, organic, local, bona-fide Portland hipster poutine. You can too!

First, we made cheese curds using New England Cheesemaking's recipe. We used raw cow's milk from the Corvallis area, brought by Emily as fruit of a "herd share" she has. Making the curds using that recipe took about 4 hours, including about 1.5 hours of pressing them to make them nice and firm. Once salted, those curds really squeaked! As they should.

Next, we made fries with organic yukon gold potatoes (from New Seasons) using Smitten Kitchen's easiest fries recipe. These really were as easy as Deb says: just put the fries in cold oil and crank it up. They might even convert me to making my own fries!

Finally, Ben made a simple mushroom gravy using a brown roux, a few button mushrooms, and some of the whey leftover after making the curds and ricotta as well. Then it was just stacking curds on fries and pouring over the gravy.

You know what? It was really really good. I'm used to poutine as being late-night drunk food, because it's so greasy and fatty and the fries are so soggy you wouldn't touch it sober. This was delightful! Although very, very rich, so we only ate a small bowl each.

So, any time you feel like taking an entire day to make poutine, give it a try!