Category Archives: Food and drink

There is something inherently good about bacon.  To purgatory with broccoli, soy, wheatgrass or edamame, bacon is Nature’s Nearly Perfect Food.  It is the belly of a pig, cured in a salt brine, then smoked for your enjoyment.  Fried in a pan, the fat melts away, leaving goodness behind to titillate your taste buds with a symphony of four-part fatty harmonies overlaying the salty melody and a crunchy bass line. 

Be it from the belly, the side, the back, the jowl or even the shoulder, bacon is good.  If it weren’t for the inherent health risks, most of us, being honest, would eat bacon four times a day, every day.  Even those with dietary restrictions long for the beauty of bacon.  Why do you think some cultures brine, spice and smoke beef?  To approximate the taste of that most terrible of treyf:  Bacon.

Today, bacon is most commonly sold cooked and ready to eat.  Fourteen slices, or barely 200 grams that you can microwave for 11 seconds and put next to the eggs and toast.  Someone in a boardroom somewhere decided, after much market research, that we didn’t want a half kilo or a pound of bacon, we just wanted fourteen slices after cooking. 

We wouldn’t notice that each slice was cut so thin that it only had one side.  We wouldn’t notice that each slice was barely big enough to qualify for adhesive bandage membership.  We wouldn’t notice that the price per pound was up over $5.  We surely wouldn’t object if the actual product tastes almost exactly not like bacon at all, corners being cut for production convenience.  Most assuredly, we consumers would be amazed by the blazing beacon of bacon convenience, pre-sliced, pre-cooked and pre-measured for our convenience and their profit.     

Which is why today’s bacon is so distressing.  Bacon is not supposed to be so thin that your can do Thai shadow puppets through it.  A certain burger chain advertises their creation as having six strips of bacon.  If the measure ‘strip’ is equivalent to the lineal dimensions of the Penny Black stamp, yes, it has six strips of transparent smoked and salted pork-residue related product.  Bacon was created to have substance, heft and taste; not just of fat, salt and smoke, but also the taste of Pork. 

Bacon, until metrification stirred the waters in Canada, circa 1971, was sold by the pound.  454 grams of raw, salty, smoked Grace that you had to cook.  You could buy it unsliced, as a plate of bacon that you cut as thick as you wanted, or chopped it into cubes of Goodness for perogies. 

There was also the niche product called Green Bacon, salt brined (but not smoked) pork belly, which has gone MIA from the marketplace;  It is more profitable for the manufacturers to turn it into pseudo-bacon and shovel at us in a resealable package as part of a marriage proposal. 

By the way, notice the weight of that convenient resealable package of potential goodness.  Is is actually a metric-standard 500 grams?  Is it 454 grams, the convenient and familiar pound?  Nope, it’s less but still priced at what you would expect for a pound of bacon bliss.  It just looks like its a pound.  Read the label.

However, there are still some practitioners of the Noble Art of Bacon, who sell their products in your average supermarket.  You have to root around on the bacon altar to find them, but they’re there.  There is a PC-brand “Olde Fashioned – Farm Style” kilogram package that tastes like bacon, has enough heft per slice to have a full three dimensions and actually contains lean meat as part of the slice.  Occasionally some western brands sneak over the Ontario-Manitoba border that taste and look like bacon.  Frenchy’s comes to mind.

In Quebec, there are several producers that take their art seriously.  In the Spring, you can get Oreilles de crisse, which is brined, smoked and deep-fried pork jowl.  The literal translation from Quebecois is Christ’s Ears, but despite the confusing and disturbing moniker, it’s bacon:  Excellent, perfectly proportioned lean to fat to salt to smoke, bacon, served screechingly hot with eggs poached in amber #2 maple syrup.  Yes, it’s more calories than most people eat in a month, but once a year, it’s a dietary choice you make, then enjoy.   

There are regional brands that bring burning wood smoke near the pork bellies instead of showing four tons of frozen pork a photo of a smoker and yelling “Hickory”.  There is even a Bacon of the Month Club.  Look it up if you don’t believe it.

I have personally consumed artisanal oak-double-smoked bacon that transcends mere rhapsodic linguistic gymnastics to land and stick a half-gainer dismount onto the crunchy scented floor of Bacon Heaven outside Flavour Town:  A now-closed butcher shop made it in the back.  It wasn’t merely good Bacon; it was Communion.    

As chef and author Anthony Bourdain said: “God lives between the skin and the bone of a pig”  Amen Brother Tony.  Amen.

The season is coming, believe it or not, when the sugar maples start to run and maple producers start to think of the days and nights over the boiler.  For those who consider Aunt Jemima or Mrs. Butterworth as the pinnacle of pancake potions, please give your head a shake.  A vigorous shake.  A go-to-the-chiropractor-shoulda-worn-a-HANS-device head shake that makes your eyes go wobbly for a hour and loosens dental work. 

Jemima and Butterworth have as much to do with maple syrup as you do with Slovakian monetary policy and high school Calculus:  Distant, unrecognizable, confusing and a bit strange. 

For centuries before us white folks got here, the First Nations figured out that a small cut in a sugar maple tree would produce a sweet watery fluid in the early days of Spring.  If you collect that tree water and heat it for a while over a fire, it becomes sticky and outrageously sweet with a taste that is nothing like honey, or corn or anything else except maple syrup.  In exchange for tuberculosis and blankets, the First Nations taught us how to tap sugar maples and to make maple syrup. 

The sap from a sugar maple only starts to rise up from the roots of mature trees when the daytime temperatures are above freezing.  It is an initial harbinger of Spring being if not just around the corner, at least on the off-ramp to the boulevard a couple of turns away from the corner.

The first step is collecting the sap.  In The Day, buckets were used to collect the tiny drips of sap from a hole drilled and tapped into the tree.  The producer would use a horse-drawn sled to go from tree to tree, emptying each bucket into a big barrel, then bringing it all to the sugar shack.  Some producers still do it Old School, but most use tubing that runs from tree to tree in a plumbing nightmare through the forest.

Collecting the sap is merely the start.  Sap is almost all water, with trace elements of natural sugar and micronutrients up the wazoo.  ("Up the Wazoo" is a scientific, very precise measurement term)  To make syrup, the producer boils the sap for hours, boiling off the water, concentrating the indefinable flavours. 

As a Rule of Thumb, 40 gallons of the sap makes 1 gallon of finished syrup.  Most producers use a propane or oil-fired evaporator to boil off the water.  Some still stick to the traditional methods, feeding split, dried oak and other hardwoods into the furnace, creating that heady scent of wood smoke, hot metal and boiling syrup that is only found at a sugar shack.

When the syrup is judged by the producer to be right, he or she drains off the batch for bottling and starts again; another batch boiled down to produce the 40 to 1 ratio of sap to syrup. 

There are standards of course.  The lightest, Canada #1 Light, has a little more water and a delicate taste that subtly whispers "maple" (complete with italics), on your pancakes or ice cream.  That’s the grade exported most of the time, in tiny plastic decorative jugs emblazoned with "Souvenir of Canada".  The quantity is usually a couple or four ounces. 

At the other end of spectrum, Canada #3 Dark grabs your collar, slaps your face with the pancakes and screams "Yippy Kay Aye Yay MAPLE Motherf***er!"  Then it steals your car. 

This is stuff that we don’t export, as Canada is not keen on causing international incidents with a souvenir bottle of evaporated tree sap.  Canada #3 Dark is usually found in gallon bottles with a WHMIS warning to hide the car keys and to cover your ears when you open it.  Many Canadians are unaware of the existence of #3 Dark; they’re happy with Amber, the kind you’re most likely to find in a supermarket.

Which all leads to the gallon jug of Canada #3 Dark in my kitchen right now.  A certain producer of maple products always has a stock of #3 Dark in their store at an Undisclosed Location in the country.  While I was there today, they were running sap line and setting up a new set of trees they have adjudged to be ready to tap in a few weeks.  A sure sign that Spring is not far off.

There are some things in the world that have to be experienced, rather than explained, but here we go.  Poutine.  Some of you know what poutine is already, so bear with us, this is more an explanation for those who don’t have The Knowledge.  Also, thanks to Kim Rodger-St.Denis for sparking the story idea.

As America has Hot Dogs and Apple Pie as the quintessential "American Food" Canada has Poutine, an eclectic and very peculiar dish.  Here is the basic recipe:

Hot french fries.  Top with cheese curds.  Top that with a ladle of brown gravy.  Serve.  That’s the basic construction for what is a rudimentary poutine.  There are variations that are important to understand, some which might even be described as snobbish, or even bordering on gastro-porn, but we can live with that criticism.

First of all, the french fries, or chips, must be made fresh.  Not frozen, not pre-cut from a factory somewhere.  The chips must be cooked in oil and crispy to the tooth, as well as tasting like potato.  They shouldn’t be commercial ‘fries’ that taste of nothing except salt and oil on starch tubes.  Be ruthless here in choosing your poutine.  Look for fifty-pound bags of potatoes in the kitchen.  Real potatoes means real french fries, which means real poutine. 

The curds:  To make cheddar cheese you make curds first, drain away the whey, then press it into a block that we know as cheese.  Curds are the solid, irregularly shaped proto-cheese morsels that are made before pressing.  Curd cheese is never cold, just barely chilled is ideal.  Curds should squeak when you bite them as proof that they are impeccably fresh.  We mean truly fresh.  Curds should have been milk in a cow’s udder yesterday morning category of fresh.  Orange cheese is fine, but so is the natural creamy white cheese curd.

Cheese sauce is never used.  Nor is processed cheese, or processed cheese food, or processed cheese food product.  Shame on you for considering it, you ignorant, unreconstructed gastronomic peasant.

Gravy:  There are several schools of thought in the construction of the very best poutine and gravy is always key.  The gravy should be brown.  The gravy should not be identifiable as a particular species of gravy.  You should not be able to say that the gravy is beef, or pork, or game, or veal, or chicken.  It has to be ‘meat’ yes, but you shouldn’t be able to tell which meat. 

Viscosity is important.  Think 50-weight motor oil, or corn syrup for thickness.  The ‘au jus’ or ‘French Dip’ type of fluids have no place in poutine.  There are some purists that insist that only canned commercial ‘brown’ gravy is acceptable, preferably with salt as the first, second and third ingredients and unpronounceable chemical names as the next dozen or so things in it.  I must humbly agree.  A impeccably crafted brown stock from roasted beef bones with a brunette roux base and bouquet garni, lovingly prepared by a professional, trained chef is not the right gravy for poutine.

The venue.  Where you eat poutine is important.  A french fry truck or chip truck is the preferred venue.  If the chip wagon is a converted yellow school bus or superannuated delivery truck, then you have the potential for superlative poutine.  A white-tablecloth joint is where you won’t get good poutine.  Needless to say chain places do not serve poutine that you actually want to put in your mouth. 

The place where you get yours should be named something like Bob’s Patate, Chez Ti-Gus, Vites Vites Patates Frites, Casse-Croute Marie Claude or Le Casse Croute Arc-En-Ciel Rainbow Snack Bar Tab Sprite Coke.  The person serving you should either have tattoos or look very likely to have tattoos.  If they list ‘carny’ somewhere on their curriculum vitae, that’s usually a good sign. 

Condiments available should include, white vinegar, malt vinegar, salt, celery salt, seasoned salt, barbecue salt and ‘all-dress-tout-garni’ salt.  You won’t use any of the condiments, but they should be there as a proper poutine venue also might serve, hot dogs, steamies, hamburgs, sausages, onion rings Pogo’s and canned soda pop.

Poutine should be eaten from a white plastic foam bowl with either a wooden ‘fork’ or a plastic fork.  Plates are to be shunned.  Table linens are to be shunned.  Paper napkins are mission-critical as the gravy will drip somewhere.  Perched on the hood of your car, or at an available picnic table is the best place to eat poutine.

Now the critical scientific facts.  Calories?  There’s fewer numbers in the Israeli arms budget.  Cholesterol?  Don’t ask.  You don’t want to know.  There are no health benefits to poutine, except as a source of calcium from the cheese curds and enough salt to ensure that you get your daily nutritional fix of iodine several hundred times over. 

The taste?  Exquisite.  Hot, delectable, real, french fries, with stringy partially melted rubbery mild cheese curds and the deep salty meaty gravy funk to top off the flavour profile.

It is poutine.  Canada’s gift to the World.   

Those who know me, know that I can eat and prefer to eat well.  Although I used to weigh 300 pounds and have radically renovated my diet, I still like a good feed.  There was one notable occasion at a Brazilian restaurant in Dallas, where two of us essentially lapsed into a food coma with the meat sweats but wouldn’t stop eating.  Or a place in Indianapolis that had ribs on special.  Five racks later we rolled out like two Michelin Men covered in sauce. 

Let us just say, I don’t do that anymore, but I could hold my own, thanks.  I do like good food. 

Smoked Meat is a delicacy of extraordinary proportion.  Take a beef brisket, rub a secret mix of peppercorns, salt, bay leaves and other spices into the brisket.  Let it sit for X number of days.  Brine the brisket in another secret recipe for a certain period of time, then steam it for four hours.  Slice against the grain, with a little fat, then a little lean.  Serve on a plate, with light rye bread, some mustard and a Coke.

What most people call "Smoked Meat" or "Corned Beef Brisket" is perfectly acceptable with one very specific caveat.  Schwartz’s in Montreal. 

Charcuterie Herbraique de Montreal Inc.  Chez Schwartz Chez, at 3895 Saint-Laurent Boulevard, Montreal.  There is only one.  World Famous, since 1928.  Or www.schwartzsdeli.com if you prefer to look for yourself.

If you have ever eaten there, then you have been to the Vatican of Smoked Meat.  If God ran a deli, then this is what He would make.  Instead of instructing his Son to do the Loaves and Fishes, he’d be yelling at him not to make it too lean.  

I’ve been to the Carnegie Deli in New York.  It is good smoked meat, but it isn’t near the quality of Schwartz’s.  I’ve been to Dunn’s,  Nope.  Ben’s?  Not even close and now closed.  Coorsh?  Drek.  Lester’s?  Double Drek. 

Schwartz’s is now, has always been and always will be, the ne plus ultra of Smoked Meat.  The list of Who’s Who who have eaten there starts at Jerry Lewis, the Rolling Stones, Nana Mouskouri, Hank Aaron and Tim Allen.  And me:  I’m in Who’s Not. 

The taste is that indefinable combination of spices, salt, peppercorns, smoke, steam, excellent beef and hot fat.  It is perfectly balanced to the palate.  A sandwich usually contains about a pound or so, hand sliced for each order.  There is the perfect mix of crumbly pink lean meat that flakes into strands if you look at it too long.  There is the exactly right mix of beef fat, source of all good flavor. 

A sandwich is probably around 11,000 calories and a half-pound of bad cholesterol.  You don’t have one every day, without having a cardiac surgeon on speed dial.  Schwartz’s is a treat to be savored once or twice a year. 

Today a very nice man, Mitch Garvis, brought me an eight pound whole, unsliced brisket from Schwartz’s.  I gladly gave him money in return, as Schwartz’s is not inexpensive, but extraordinary value for the money.  

After work I steamed a fist-sized hunk of it for three hours until the meat started to strand apart.  Then I sliced it as thin as I could and put it on a plate with some sliced light rye bread and French’s Mustard on the side.  I made a couple of sandwiches and ate them.

I am now sitting in front of my computer, with my pants belt undone, writing this and savoring the post-Schwartz’s Smoked Meat food stupor. 

It is one of life’s pleasures to have a smoked meat from Schwartz’s.  If you are ever in Montreal and hungry, go to Schwartz’s.  Stand in line for as long as it takes.  Get a Large Platter. Don’t order a lean, or you will be shunned.  Wear your Eatin’ Britches or Buffet Pants.  Eat.  Enjoy.