These “putsins” they ate were an Acadian delicacy also known as poutine râpée. They are a combination of grated and mashed potatoes with chopped salt pork in the center, which are boiled for two and a half to three hours. Yum. I mean, yuck. I guess they are served with either ketchup or with maple syrup.

As I googled around to refresh this dim childhood memory, I was stunned, STUNNED, I say, at all the people who seemed to know about this dish. And there were plenty of recipes. We were actually able to talk to my grandparents over the summer about how to make putsins (as they pronounced it) and despite the grossed out memories of my childhood, we endeavored to have a go at making our own poutine râpée.

First, you have to peel a lot of goddamned potatoes. More potatoes than you’d even need for a regular meal. Then you take a third of them, chop them up, and boil them for mashed potatoes. You take the other two thirds and you grate them. We tried a fine grate for this attempt, as we had tried to make poutine râpée a while ago and they fell apart. We thought maybe it was because the potatoes weren’t grated and amalgamated enough.

You also have to squeeze as much water out of the grated potatoes as possible. We thought this might also have been a contributor to our previous failure. All the recipes say to put the grated potatoes in a cotton cloth and squeeze the ever loving shit out of them. We did this last time. It was a lot of work, and the taters were still too wet. This time, we did as the ancient Acadians did, and used our salad spinner that we got at Bed Bath and Beyond.

Here are the shredded potatoes on the left, and the mashed potatoes on the right. We formed them into balls, and they still seemed pretty loose and incohesive. The problem we had last time was that the putsins fell apart as they boiled in the water. This had been quite a labor investment at this point and we did not want to have to order a pizza for dinner.

My mom said she remembered one of her aunts wrapping her putsins in cheese cloth to keep them from falling apart. This seemed like another elaborate step, but we were determined we would be eating putsins by any means necessary. To hedge our bets however, we also decided to bake a few of our potato balls in the oven. Not traditional, but maybe we could reinvent this dish for the 21st century. Maybe it would be a hit. Maybe we’d be famous.

Here they go in the oven.

Here they stew in the pot. They take TWO AND A HALF HOURS to boil. Holy crap. Do you ever wait that long for food? Ever? We were confident that these were going to hold together this time with the cheese cloth. We let them simmer. And we waited and we waited and we waited. And because we were thinking in regular food prep timing, we didn’t think ahead to realize it would be 9 pm by the time these things were ready.

We waited for two hours and decided to take our chances.

There they are. They have been described as “gray,” “gelatinous,” and “slimy.” We found all those things to be true. And while I never ate them as a kid, they seemed immensely familiar. I have deep heritage.

They were…well…pretty god awful, actually. They were fairly bland, as described in the various recipes we found. The potato was dense and chewy like gnocchi, but stickier. The baked ones were drier and puffier, but not much better. I was figuring the fat from the salt pork would melt a little, but no. There were still big pieces of rubbery white fat in there. We had no ketchup in the house, so we figured we could use poutine gravy, meant for the other Québécois dish that we know so well. Dave has a lifetime supply of poutine gravy packets. You know, in case the apocalypse occurs. Or Jesus comes back.

We had one or two of these and called it a night. After all that work. What a hearty people the Acadians were, taking all that labor and over two hours of cooking to somehow make meat and potatoes inedible. I didn’t think it was possible.

I still love my grandparents, though.

Part of my heritage is French Canadian, and it just seemed wrong that something like cholesterol could impede my ability to celebrate the food of my ancestors. Those brave French men and women who landed on the shores of New Brunswick after their long journey across the Atlantic, and warmed their hand around the, um, deep fryer.

There’s nothing we like more than a food related challenge, and we endeavored to discover if there was some way we could make poutine less bad for us. We knew there had to be a way.

We already knew how to make our own oven fries. We started with cute little taters and cut them up into thin wedges.  We used 3/4 lbs potatoes = 240 calories (0 fat). Instead of using lard or duck fat as the traditional recipe requires, we used a tablespoon of canola oil. Canola oil is the least bad vegetable oil. One tablespoon canola oil, is 124 calories, 13 grams fat, one gram saturated fat.

For some reason, Dave has probably more than a lifetime supply of poutine gravy mix. He has a friend that brings him gravy packets every time she visits Montreal. If we ever have to live through nuclear war, the second coming, or a zombie infestation, we will certainly not lack for poutine gravy.

The strange thing is that this gravy is vegetarian. It’s made with soy material, vegetal material and brown stuff. And it’s pretty tasty. You dump it in a pan and add water and stir. 1 cup poutine sauce = 60 calories (0 fat)

Next was figuring out the cheese and this was going to be harder. Cheese is just inherently not good for you. Normally, the cheese curds sort of make the dish but they are so bad for you. It’s a goddamned conundrum.

We didn’t want to try any sort of fake cheese or non dairy cheese. We are trying to be healthy, but we didn’t want eating this to be torturous. So we opted for a block of part skim mozzarella. It wasn’t going to have the squeak of cheese curds, but it was going to melt really nice. Two oz part skim mozzarella = 180 calories (12 grams total, 7 grams saturated)

Here’s our fries, getting toasty in the oven. These are the easiest thing in the world to make. You don’t need pre-made frozen fries. You can make them yourself. And then you know what’s in them. And you can feel superior and self righteous.

Look at these! Professional!

I should say that when I say “we” when describing the cooking in this post, it really means “Dave.” But “we” is such a handy phrase.

Below, we have assemblage action. Hot fries, cheese cubes, and hot gravy.

Often, people miss and important step at this point. Yes, you can start eating right now.

But it’s better to cover the whole plate and let the heat melt the cheese into the gooey lumps it was meant to be. You don’t want chewy cheese, do you? The answer is no. You don’t want chewy cheese. You want melty cheese.

Here’s the money, right here. Fricken yum, people.

We added fresh parsley, because we like to be dainty. It was totally edible. Delicious, even. Even kind of fun. It was a decent, meal-sized amount. Here was our estimated calories for this dish, which we shared: 600 calories, 25 grams fat, 8 grams saturated fat. For comparison, here is the dietary info for a small serving of poutine from McDonald’s in Canada. Or here is one from Burger King. Holy crap, they are trying to kill us.

Ours was largely guilt free. Somewhere in our ancient, lizard brain, we might realize, “There’s no duck fat up in here!” But we must temper our lizard brains, because we are no longer running across the tundra with spears, trying to catch our dinner.

The perfect dessert after a meal of poutine, no?

The creator of this amazing cake is artist, writer, animal lover, nature lover, cake baker, foodie, avid maker of artist trading cards (ATCs), and blogger, Ronna of Ontario, Canada.

The “french fries” are Sara Lee pound cake cut into fry shapes and toasted. The “cheese curds” are made out of white chocolate and the “gravy” is dulce de leche.

For more photos read the rest: Faux Poutine Cake, at Ronna’s fantastic poutine blog: Poutine Chronicles.

Via Delicious Poutine