Canada is a big red spinning question mark sitting above America. What’s there? I don’t know. Who’s there? I don’t know. What do they eat? I do know this. Because I’m a woman of the world, I’m aware that the Canadians are one of the few nations that can match the Yankees for junk food triumphalism.

So now that our three day summer is over, what better way of welcoming in months of frost and pensioners freezing to death in their beds, than with a classic dish from the country that invented winter? Hailing from Quebec, ‘Poutine’ is a ridiculous calorie pile of French fries, meat slop and curdled cheese. It’s the perfect comfort food after a day in the woods shooting deer or mounties or whatever.

Poutine

I don’t often ask you to do anything challenging, but it’ll take a couple of tries for you to really nail making cheese curds. I burnt my hand and someone else died trying to get one normal looking batch for this blog. Once you’ve got the technique down, you can become your own cheese factory, churning out slightly rotten milk products to the masses.

Ingredients

2 x pints of full fat milk
1 x lemon
A bunch of potatoes
Gravy

Step 1.

Slowly warm your cattle pop till it forms that gross milk skin on top. Don’t be overenthusiastic, if you bring it straight to the boil you kill all the enchanted enzymes that turn it into curds.

Step 2.

Take it off the heat, squeeze in your lemon and stir through.

Step 3.

As if by magic, the milk will start separating into clouds of creamy spawn. If it smells like the final wet heaves of a bad night, you’re on the right track.

Step 4.

Once cool, strain the curds from the whey using some cheesecloth, or a dirty pillowcase, or a femidom, or some tissue paper or whatever you have lying round your room, and season with salt and pepper.

Step 5.

Weigh down your dairy lump and leave to strain overnight. I know it’s annoying that this takes basically two days to make, but vaguely amusing, slightly revolting meals don’t just fall out of the sky and into your large intestine.

Step 6.

After 24 hours, if your sack of milk hasn’t transformed into a ball of squeaky cheese chunks that look like tonsillitis, you fucked up. IT MUST SQUEAK. You’ll get what I mean once you hear it squeaking.

Steps 7 and 8.

For the French fries, slice some potatoes up into, umm, chip shapes and cook until golden. You bloody morons. You just asked me how to make chips. This is chips, remember them?

Step 9.

Try not to drop your delicious instant gravy on the floor. 

Step 10.

Once you’ve cleaned that up, collect the jar of non-descript meat drippings that’s been in your fridge for six weeks. Warm it up, treat it like gravy, by putting it in a boat.

All you need to do is now toss all your different creations together on a plate. Now you just kick back while the cheese and meat sauce congeal on top of the fries. Curl up on the couch in front of Due South and enjoy with a steaming mug of husky urine.

Bone-appetit!

JOANNA FUERTES-KNIGHT

@fuertesknight

Previously: Girl Eats Food – Hippy Johnny’s Chocolate Brownies

Really fucking hungry? Check out Joanna Fuertes-Knight’s (totally free) online cookbook! It’s got every Girl Eats Food recipe ever in it.