Category Archive

You know what sucks about being married? Sharing my poutine. That’s about it, but still.

Kris at To Be Mrs. Marv asked SiS for tips on how to make poutine, so Hanne and I have begun our investigation. We ate two halves of two poutines each before we left for Christmas. More accurately, I greedily ate about 2/3rds of both while Hanne tried to snap a good shot. I darted my fork in after each camera click, making off with great gooey gobs before she started eating. She either didn’t notice or didn’t complain, which is why I married her.

What is poutine, you ask? Poutine is, like, the greatest. It’s comfort food that will make your arms feel weak and your heart thump lugubriously. Glump glump. It’s a clusterfuck of fries, gravy and cheese. But no ordinary cheese. We grew up in Alberta where so-called poutine is mangled by a mess of cheap melted mozzarella cheese. You can’t do that. You just can’t.

A real poutine needs fresh cheese curds. Finding them fresh is likely the biggest challenge in making a good homemade poutine. The fresher the better as curds lose their springiness quick. Poutine is all about textures: crispy fries and teeth squeaking curds swallowed in a salty goopy gravy.

My favourite Montreal poutines can be found at the 24hr La Banquise (they have two dozen variations, but I’ve only tried the original pictured above) and at La Belle Province on St-Laurent Boulevard just above Prince Arthur. La Belle Province is a mediocre chain, but by some miracle combo of fries, curds, good gravy and typical Montreal inconsistencies, this particular location nails it. I’ve stolen into many a winter night out of that joint with a piping hot tin plate balanced on my hand (see the spoils in the picture below).

The best poutine in the world can be had at Au Pied de Cochon. I had hoped that their cookbook would hold the secret to their silky gravy, but unfortunately their poutine recipe tells me to pick up a can of PdC gravy from the restaurant. Secretive protectionist bastards! I’ve heard they emulse foie gras into their gravy. They also serve a poutine with a slab of foie gras on top for twenty bucks a plate. That plate alone is enough to convince me what side of the foie gras debate I’m on.

So Hanne and I will continue our investigation. We’ll eat more of this heavenly sludge and then test some recipes. When we come up with the right concoction, we will share it with you here. Kris has a head-start on us–check out her perfect fries here.

Montreal’s best and biggest market, open year round, is Marché Jean-Talon.

Locally grown garlic. This stall ruined cheap supermarket garlic for us.

Great big batches of leek + The Silver Spoon = perfect leek soup.

Artichokes. Tomatoes. Word.

Produce galore: Cabbage, Bell Peppers, Parsnips

Quebec grown apples and cranberries.

The farm eggs we should be buying more often.

Marche Jean-Talon is Montreal’s mothership market. For food tourists, it is a destination not to be missed. Like I said, it’s open year round but with the first bit of snow that just hit, it will go into semi-hibernation. Most of the good local stalls will take the winter off, but there’s still some great food to be had indoors. Not only does Montreal have a few year round markets, but there is also a mini-market open 24-hours during the summer at Metro-Montreal.

There are, count them below, 13 markets in Montreal.

Ah Creton! I snapped the above with the work camera during lunch and saved it as a backup post in case we got ourselves into a jam in our quest to keep up with NaBloPoMo. Well, we’re one day past the halfway mark and I’ve tapped our reserve. Hanne’s post yesterday probably disqualifies us* anyway, although being at the top of Booze Stereo on Google ought to make our blog totally famous.

That this is a reserve post is not to say that creton doesn’t deserve SiS’s attention. Creton is one of many reasons that Quebec doesn’t need to worry about losing its identity to the rest of Canada. The day Quebec smartens up and starts protecting its food with the same fervency they protect their language is the day I find a marker, an old Bloc Quebecois campaign sign, some duct tape and a hockey stick and take to the streets. I had never heard of this delicacy before moving here and I suspect it can’t be found anywhere else.

So what is it? Well I don’t know exactly. Let’s just say it’s a good thing the camera at work is not so hot, because this food is none too pretty. In fact, the less you look at the grey matter mush (not to say it’s brain… although…) the better. This is a case you best not “eat with your eyes.” Man, I hope it’s not made out of eyes.

All I know is that creton is meat. Pig, particularly. And it’s fatty. Which is the part that makes it great, of course. The meat paste is best served on a round of baguette. Although at work I further alienated myself (as if eating this stuff at lunch wasn’t bad enough and, uh… “why is Carlo taking a picture of it his lunch???”) by running my finger around the inside of the container.

And it tastes like….

I just went to consult Hanne and our friends on that one. “Fatty, salty, porky,” is all they had. Thank a lot guys.

Each creton producer puts their own spin on the spread, each using a unique blend of spices. The one above had nutmeg and cloves.

The best creton I’ve had in town was served by the best restaurant in town, Au Pied Du Cochon. Actually, their creton is tied for first with the stuff you can get at La Queue de Cochon. The tie is probably because it’s the same creton. I was just told that QdC supplies PdC some of their prepared meats. QdC can be found on Laurier Ave. just east of where Hanne and I are now, which is our friends’ place, which I know doesn’t help you much. But too bad. You’re on your own. Blogging from your friends place is not only extremely unsociable but is also costing me my fair share of cheese. Damn you NaBloPoMo! 16 days down.

Link to Creton on Wikipedia, included so you don’t ruin my mystery meat in the comments section.

*Hanne’s Edit: Yesterday’s post was TOTALLY valid. Jerk.

Our fridge has been saddled with a bumper crop of fall ingredients the past week. We’ve spent the last few days eating nothing but vegetables. This weekend we did our best to polish off a stubborn batch of cabbage and leek soup that had been holed up in our fridge, refusing to disappear. Too much veg!

This morning I decided we needed a meal we could sink our teeth into. Something our guts could grab hold of and mull over. So this morning Hanne and I dragged our veg laden stomachs around the corner to Reservoir, our neighbourhood microbrewery and bistro that puts on a wicked brunch every Saturday and Sunday.

Reservoir serves no ordinary brunch. It’s both fancy and casual, a mashup of French bistro food and British pub grub, complete with mystery meat. It’s the kind of food that goes well with either a glass of wine or a house brewed stout.

On a Sunday morning Reservoir is packed with Franco and Anglo post bohemian hipsters, creative types with real jobs and accessory-babies that are as meticulously put together as they are. I think some of them even do their kids’ hair. Turnover is fast and you can get a seat fairly quickly, especially if you grab a couple stools at the bar like we did this morning.

We started off sharing a cream of mushroom soup topped with truffle oil. This guy says that restaurants use truffle oil only to charge more for their dishes, but at five bucks a dish I suspect Reservoir used truffle oil on this soup only because it tastes so good. The soup had a smooth creamy texture and the nutty aroma of butter browned in a pan. Most of the mushroom was pureed, but the morsels left behind were tightly packed flavour bombs. This, my friends, is the right way to start your Sunday:

It took Hanne and me a while to figure out what to order next. If there’s something weird like cow’s tongue or pig’s feet on the menu, it’s Hanne’s dish. Me? I tend to order food that makes a mockery of my choking arteries while on its way down to my gut. The problem today was that the weirdest dish up for grabs was also the biggest and fattiest piece of meat. We both spotted it as the waiter scooped one from the kitchen behind the bar and walked past us. Hanne called dibs and stole the beef cheek right out of my mouth. Because Hanne and I are plate swappers, we’re unable to select the same dish, so I tried to do Hanne one better. I ordered the blood sausage, which I knew had the potential to out-weird her order. Take that, beef cheeks!

BLOOD SAUSAGE

VS.

BEEF CHEEK(S)

The beef cheek was topped with a poached egg and came on a bed of pureed squash. The meat was braised, and the juice and fat had massaged the meat to perfect tenderness. I didn’t notice the poached egg, but Hanne let me clean the remaining squash and meat juice off her plate with the crisp, buttery bread that accompanied our meal. Hanne admitted the dish wasn’t all that weird, but she was happy nonetheless.

The blood sausage, on the other hand, was very weird. It was the first time I tried the dish and I’m happy I took the risk. It had a similar thick texture to liver, without the dry pastiness. The flavour reminded me of red wine. I’m not sure if it was flavoured with wine or not, but I can’t imagine anything else that would make blood taste so good. Its maroon colour reminded me more of a cooked beet than the gushy redness of blood I’m more familiar with. The flavour of the sausage was rich and heavy on the tongue, well complimented by the sweet carrots and snappy white radishes. The sausage casing was crispy and blackened, its charred flavour so good that I continued enjoying it even after considering that I might be chomping on the equivalent of scab. Delicious! No, seriously!

Don’t be turned off by Reservoir if blood sausage and beef cheek are too unusual for you. The menu changes every week, but there are always plenty of dishes with more everyday ingredients. On previous visits, I’ve enjoyed the two-egg dish, served with lard fumé, which is kind of like bacon but thicker, better-tasting and likely worse for you. You can also order the tomato and three cheese omelette or an apple and endive salad. The dish in the thumbnail at the top of this post is wild mushrooms with onion tempura and fresh mozzarella. I hope it’s still being served next time I visit Reservoir.

Check out the full menu below: