Fries – Part Two

Those who know me know that I have a deep love for the city of Montréal. I love its buildings, its culture, its nightlife, its hockey and its plethora of endless diversions. But I must say, what I really love is that little dish of calorie-packed street food Montréal is known for called poutine. That shit is messy as all hell to eat, but damn is it good, especially after a night of drinking.

The three main components of poutine are thick-cut French fries, fresh cheese curds, and browned chicken gravy. Fresh cheese curds are nearly impossible to come by in California. The only nearby farm that sells curds (that I’ve found) is Spring Hill in Petaluma. There is absolutely no substitution for curds in the making of this dish. Might as well go out and get Animal Style fries at In-N-Out.

It’s kind of a pain in the ass to make, and the short life-span of fries means that making it skews the labour/pleasure ratio a bit. However, it’s totally worth it. The gravy is the most time-consuming part of the dish, but it’s what really makes the poutine; it’s absolutely imperative making this the focus of the dish.

The recipe’s actually pretty simple:

3 Large Russet potatoes, cut thick, soaked in ice water.

Half pound of fresh cheese curds, left out to warm 30 minutes prior to serving.

2 oz. butter

2 oz. flour

20 oz. chicken stock

Seasoning

For my recipe I diced a boiling onion and browned it in a pad of butter. Once the onion was browned I added the rest of the butter and the flour, making a dark roux with the caramelized onions. I added .5 tsp of salt, some cracked black pepper, a pinch of Fines Herbes, and another of Herbes de Provençe. Once the roux was fully incorporated, I added the stock, stirring it for 20 minutes until it was reduced to the correct thickness.

While the gravy was halfway done, I started frying the potatoes. It’s important to have the potatoes and the gravy ready to mix together immediately once they are done. Once the fries were golden, I placed a layer in a paper bowl (gotta keep that shit real), followed by a layer of curds, topped it off with more fries, and finally, poured a nice helping of hot gravy over the mixture. Oh, arteries!

Fries - Part One

I stayed at Berkeley’s Claremont Resort last week with the intention of giving myself some space to focus on a project. I needed as much time as possible to devote to the project so I decided to order room service. I usually order Club sandwiches when I travel because they tend to keep well and its ingredients are usually never the culprits of a food poisoning. I didn’t want to be hungry a few hours later so I decided to get something that packed a few more calories. I’ve always been a sucker for burgers so I ordered their sirloin cheeseburger with a side of fries and a Pellegrino.

When the food arrived I could instantly smell a strong garlic odour. I lifted the cover to notice that my fries were actually garlic fries. I referred back to the menu to confirm that there was absolutely no mention of garlic. Now, it isn’t that I don’t like garlic, but I find the whole garlic fries craze pretty lame. When did this become the standard dressing on fries? Unfortunately, restaurants all over are succumbing to this trend.

The burger ended up being one of the best I’ve ever had.

A Wine Review With a Moral

I take inventory of my wine collection every so often to check for bottles nearing maturity or to simply re-acquaint myself with my collection. I was in the mood for a Bordeaux blend to compliment a cool spring night so I pulled out a 2001 Lancaster Estate Estate Bottled Red Wine. That year was a banner vintage for Northern California wines and my recent tastings of other wines from that crop proved that the reds were just cresting their peak of maturity. The $50 I paid when it was released seemed a distant memory and I was reminded of the joys of delayed gratification.

The wine poured like a typical Bordeaux blend, a deep purplish-red. The nose was a bit deceiving, as happens with age. The longer it spent in the decanter the more subtleties emerged. At first, there was spiciness, the typical oak byproduct of the Cabernet Sauvignon. Then ripe berries emerged, cherries and plums, currants, followed by a slight grassiness, perhaps from the Petit Verdot. The taste was very similar to the bouquet, with the addition of a slight creaminess. There was a bit more oak in this than is usual for Bordeaux blends, which made for a rich, extra long finish. Overall, this was a wine with quite a few complexities worth coaxing out. To express it in a more poetic way, this wine was a walk through a rainy English rose garden with a basket of berries, following the scent of a distant goddess baking a spiced torte, then realizing that you’ve been walking for years. How’s that?

So here’s the twist followed by the moral:

I went on Snooth.com to find out what other people thought about this wine. Their 3.5 out of 5 rating wasn’t what surprised me. I absolutely lost it when I saw that this bottle was going for $900!!! Now, I know enough about the wine world to know these things happen, often actually. But as much as I enjoyed the wine, I would never think of paying that much money for it. It’s absolutely ridiculous. And I drank it on an average night for no reason other than being in search of a decent drinking experience. Luckily, I almost always get two bottles of the wines I choose. It’s the best advice that was ever given to me, and which I intend to propagate here. You never know when a bottle will end up tainted by bad cork or uneven cellaring. This may seem outrageous, buying two of the same exact thing, but take my word for it; you’ll only have to fall back on that second bottle once to appreciate the advice. By the way, I’m not giving that $900 price tag too much credence until I confirm it with a wine merchant. But for now, that last bottle is sitting cool and pretty.

Saturdays=Youth

“I'm fed up with all these albums paying tribute to the 80s because, in general, the 80s are really treated as kitsch and as a cheesy decade-- and people love that. But for my part I consider the 80s in a really serious way, and there is no irony at all in my musical relation to the 80s. So yeah, I really can cry when I listen to a Kate Bush song or Simple Minds."

- Anthony Gonzalez

From the deluge of 80’s rehash unleashed on the masses in the last five years, few works have come off as remotely sincere and uncontrived. Although M83’s Saturdays=Youth doesn’t fully pull it off, next to Lansing-Dreiden’s The Dividing Line, it proves to be one of the most convincing efforts. This album is clearly a love-letter to a decade and its music, but the album’s strength is also its weakness.

Unfortunately, Gonzalez wears his influences on his sleeve here, which can be a bit too obvious at times and can get distracting. Some songs are easily traced to their source of influence – from Cocteau Twins to Simple Minds to Kate Bush, the songs wear a thick coat of aesthetic similarity to their ancestors. What ends up saving this album from triviality is a genuine nostalgia for the feeling of being young in those days.

The kid in the skeleton suit on the cover somehow evokes images of Donnie Darko, and just as that movie embodies the 80’s without getting lost in trying too hard, Saturdays=Youth does the decade justice in capturing the emotiveness of youth in the decade, where youth was naïve godliness, without pretense or overindulgence.

Blindness

It's about time the film version of Blindness, José Saramago's landmark 1995 novel, is finally seeing the light of day. After so many people tried unsuccessfully to attain the rights from Saramago over the years, the pursuit of many has now culminated in the vision of Brazilian director, Fernando Meirelles. I can only speculate that Saramago, now 85, with his eminent departure breathing down his neck, deemed the relinquishing of film rights as the last shot at mass dissemination of his cautionary message. After all, what other purpose does a writer of parables have for themselves than to warn humanity? Or perhaps he just wanted a bit more money to spend on his final days. As a self-described Communist, I doubt that would be the case.

Whatever the circumstance, I have some serious reservations about what the public’s reaction to the film may be. It would be an easy, yet gross mistake seeing this movie as just another apocalyptic film. The metaphorical essence gets lost so easily with moving pictures, that it is near impossible to create any philosophical element that is accessible to the general viewer.

It’s a common thing to examine the film independent of the source, especially when most people have no idea who José Saramago is, but it would be an absolute sin to exclude his name in any sort of analysis of this movie. He is one of the greatest living writers and one of my all time favorites, deserving much more than the Nobel Prize he received in 1998. His works are an absolute toil to get through, no matter which language you try to read them in, but in the end, are worth every painstaking page. His style is sadistically obtuse – long run-on sentences without punctuation, page-long paragraphs, elaborate lists, and whimsical tangents, have made Saramago a product for elitist intellectuals. The movie will no doubt change this, bringing his work to the masses, albeit a few degrees of interpretation removed from the original intent. My advice, read the book. And while you’re at it, read his follow up On Seeing; it’s actually quite fitting for the times.

Blindness is scheduled for US theatrical release September 2008.

Kübler Absinthe

I purchased a bottle of Kübler absinthe the other night, figuring it was a good place to start as they were practically responsible for breaking down the prohibition in America. This absinthe has long been praised for its efforts in keeping with original (pre-prohibition) recipes, and continues to be championed by absinthe traditionalists. There are two kinds of absinthe drinkers, those who relish in being part of the drink’s history, and those in search for the unusual kind of buzz absinthe has long been rumoured to deliver; this absinthe definitely suits the former demographic. At $55 a bottle, Kübler is the most affordable of the legal absinthes, domestic or imported. Although the price may sound steep, buying the same bottle through most European retailers will cost between $25 to $35 just to ship into the US (due to the high cost of shipping liquids). With five years of semi-regular absinthe consumption under my belt and absolutely no preconceptions, I took my finely tuned palate to this little demon.

Color: Absolutely clear, but louches to a very milky white. Very impressive actually.

Nose: A hodge-podge of herbs, mainly anise, in the midst of a heavily alcoholic essence.

Taste: Top notes of melissa with a heavy anise kick upfront, mid notes of hyssop, bottom notes of alcohol and herbal numbness. A strange creamy texture, much like skim milk or a rich horchata.

Thujone: They can't really label the thujone content (being that it's not an easy thing to measure precisely) In any case, it's 10mg/liter or less, as that's the legal limit in the US.

Alcohol: 53% - 106 Proof

Overall: 7.5/10 Maybe I'm spoiled from drinking some of the better European varieties, packing an average of 35-45 mg/liter of thujone, but this thing had absolutely no kick for me. The law of diminishing returns definitely applies to the thujone/alcohol scale. The more one drinks, the more thujone one gets, but also the more intoxicated one becomes, and once the alcohol overpowers the thujone, then nothing else really matters. You're just going to bed at that point. I must say, this is one of the most traditional absinthes on the market, either domestically available or European. If that’s your kick, then definitely give this a try. But if you’re after the Green Fairy, save your money for something a little more powerful and perhaps a bit less legal.