Why hello there, and welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe, where one man faces his darkest fears to the crowd’s collected praise and cheers. I’m your Gladiator Gourmand, Jon O’Guin, and today’s recipes are a grab-bag of gar-bage you can put on fries to make them more fun, and also far less healthy. It’s Halloween for your starch straws! You can skip the trick-or-treating, and just eat the bucket meant for the children by clicking this link. Everyone else, let’s dig in.

A Short, Hot Minute Been a Long Time Comin’

I think I first had this idea…a couple years ago? It was an idea lurking in the back of my mind at least one year ago, when I covered Peruvian cuisine, and discovered the dish they call Salchipapas, which I will NOT explain, because they’re coming up later, so you can either wait until we get there, or read that link to spoil yourself.

I’ve intended to make legit poutine…basically as long as the site has existed, but DEFINITELY since I made the Dessert Poutine 3 years ago. But the problem is that, really, when you get down to it, a recipe for poutine is just “make fries, make gravy, combine with cheese”. So I balked, thinking my only option was to go SUPER hard on the gravy to justify covering the whole thing for a single post…and then, at some point, I stumbled into the wide world of weird fries, and thought, “Okay, yeah, do a “Fry Fest” post, make like, 3 recipes of weird fries…Oh, we could even do it at Halloween! Make it Fry-ght Fest!”

“The lady will have the French Fries,”:
”200 years of this, Paul?”

I had that thought, and then DID NOT act on it. If I had to be brutally honest, I think it’s because of my mother’s depression. …What, I said it was going to be BRUTALLY honest. See, my mother and brother used to be pretty big into decorating for Halloween, and holding Halloween parties, and tracking how many kids come to the house, and giving out not just candy, but little toys (okay, that last one is really ONLY my mother, but still.)  And they kind of haven’t been since, you know, about 2.5 years ago. In my mother’s defense, the first Halloween after, that makes sense to be blah on: it was less than 5 months after his passing. This year, we’re in a pandemic. So we’ve really only had ONE year we could have been normal about it, and we weren’t. We were BETTER, but my mother had already kind of started her descent into Asian dramas by that point.

My mother has been re-watching this show for several days, and only in Googling for a bit did I realize that the main girl is from a band I listen to like, every couple months

And then just before Halloween I jacked my back up, meaning I had to cover a recipe I cooked in August rather than make something around Halloween itself. But if you read the posts building up to that Halloween, it is VERY clear I THINK I will be making Fry-ght Night happen. And then I don’t. BUT THIS YEAR, WE’RE DOING IT.  So, without any further tragic reflections on missed opportunities or physical and emotional pain, let’s make some FRIES!

By which I mean that I’m passing out, and Monday morning Jon has to handle this, because it turns out we procrastinated this year too.

A Huge Mess on My Hands

Normally I get mad when Past Jon dumps this sort of thing on me, but honestly, he had a pretty busy evening: he got groceries, handled several important emails, filled out our ballot, finally got the cat to eat a normal meal for the first time in about a week, helped a new friend’s creative project, took out the trash, tidied our room, AND wrote 500 words for the post…and all of that was after dinner.

So that’s not the mess I’m referring to. No, That’s actually me transitioning topics to the first, and most complicated, of our recipes: poutine! If you don’t know what Poutine is, it’s an originally French Canadian dish, that over the 70ish years since its invention, has spread to Canada in general and into the US. It consists of a LOT of Carbs and Fat, as it is “French Fries and cheese curds topped with a ladle of hot gravy”. That’s it. (Though there is a growing movement to redefine the dish as “hot liquid ladled over fatty substance and fries”, so that variants like “Chowder Poutine” can be counted, essentially making poutine a TYPE of dish, like “soup” or “pasta” rather than a strict recipe)

Stuff like “what if Poutine were a little closer to Garlic bread”? Or “Poutine where the gravy is a curry”.

The dish originated in Quebec, where eating Cheese curds is very popular, so the original recipe was just cheese curds tossed on fries, with gravy added to keep the ensemble warm. Since my first post about it in 2017, there’s been a lot more professional journalists talking about its history and origin, which is cool to see. The title pun is based on the fact that, as far as most research suggests, the name is a local slang for “mess”: “poutine” technically means “pudding”, referring to like, a little cake or pastry, but somehow (implicitly, according to PAST Jon, through sexist references to fatter women) the term came to mean a mess or waste of time, which was supposedly the first reaction to the request to put Cheese curds on fries: “that’s just going to be a mess/waste!”

Now, the poutine Is the most complicated of today’s recipes, because I have to do actual cooking for it. Well,k I don’t HAVE to: I have a jar of pre-made brown gravy. But, c’mon. gravy is just “a roux mixed with broth and seasoning”. It is TRIVIAL to make. So I made it. 2 tablespoons of butter, 2 of flour, a tablespoon of beef bouillon, and a pint of beef broth.

Visually fascinating stuff.

Simmer that down to a gravy-like consistency, and don’t use a whole tablespoon of beef bouillon. After reducing, my gravy was salty enough that I actually agreed with my mother’s assessment of “too salty”, a claim normally dismissed since the time she used it on a recipe that had not been salted at all.

It’s not as painful as the Cacio e Pepe we screwed up.

Once the gravy’s done, you just pour it over the cheese curds sitting on top of your fries. Oh, crap, I need to cover the fries.

Measure Once, Fry Twice

So, Because I have technically 3 recipes to get through in the next thousand words, allow me to condense some of the explanation down: PRASOH. Hmm. Too condensed. Alright. So, a lot of people assert that the BEST fries are twice-fried fries, because twice-fried fries fix fried fry flaws. Specifically, the problem most home cooks have with making fries is that if you cook your fries at high enough heat to get nice crispy exteriors, the middles are still undercooked when the outsides are done, or the outsides are burnt by the time the middle’s good. Cooking at a lower temp gets them cooked all the way through, but the fries don’t get crispy. (This is because higher heat causes the starches to cook a certain way, bonding with the oil, yada yada science stuff)

AS such, I decided to double-fry all the fries for these three recipes. I bought three russet potatoes, each roughly 1 pound, and julienned them, using my mandoline. No, not the instrument. As we’ve discussed, that’s a mandolin. A Mandoline (pronounced exactly like the instrument) is a thin cutting tool. Like if the side of a box grater was just one flat surface.

The teeth at the bottom are because we’re using the wide julienne setting. It is also terrifying to push the potato into.

The potatoes are fed down into the double blade system, cutting them into strips ideal of big ol’ fries. Which is a problem, because my counter-top fryer is only like, 5” across. So I had to cut most of my fries in half. I also rinsed them: freshly sliced potatoes can weep starch, which can get gummy in frying oil, so a 20-30 minute soak will get it off, or you can get most of it by just tossing the potato slices around in the liquid for a couple minutes, almost like rinsing rice.

Rinsed fries are necessary for sushi.

An initial 5-10 minute fry at 325 degrees will allow you to cook the fries through, getting their insides soft and fluffy. The timing can vary based on the fryer you use, the relative heat/humidity of the room, all sorts of irritating variables. Once lightly browned, toss the fries onto a paper-towel-lined baking sheet to cook and dry. If you WANTED, at this point, you could bag up and freeze the fries to once-fry them later. I just stacked them all up in tiers so I could fry them a batch at a time later.

Now, I’m going to order the next two recipes in order of complexity, because that way it’s a steady scale from the poutine on down. Technically, the order I cooked things in was salchipapas, patatje oorlog, poutine. But as I’ll explain, that was because of little details for oil temp. So let’s forge on to Salchipapas.

Time to Peru-se These Fries

I talked briefly about Salchipapas in our post discussing Peru cuisine, but just to recap it: Salchipapas are a Peruvian dish that has spread to other Latin American nations in popularity, consisting of French Fries and Hot Dogs tossed together and sauced. Specifically, sauced with mayo, ketchup, aji Amarillo (a yellow pepper paste from the region), or, according to some sources, the mysterious salsa rosada or “rosy sauce”…which is just what Americans call Fry Sauce: mayo and ketchup mixed. This recipe is hot dog chunks tossed with fries, covered in ketchup, mayo, and pepper sauce.

“Covered” is a strong word, but I only had a PACKET of ketchup, so I didn’t want to go too far overboard with everything else.

I don’t have pictures of the PROCESS of making these, because once I cooked the fries, I just fried the hot dog chunks as I brought the oil to the higher temp. Look, the dish’s NAME is a portmanteau of salchicha and papas, meaning “hot dog” and “potatoes”. It is a VERY simple name, so simplicity is perfectly in line.

Flavorwise, this dish was pretty fun, though if/when I make it in the future, I think you need to make the hot dog chunks smaller. They really kind of chunk up the process of eating it. I do really like the flavors going on, with mayo serving as a rich backbone, ketchup being kind of sweet, and the aji paste being a mildly spicy, very pepper-flavored addition that gives a nice cutting edge to the overall dish.

And if you think “Jon, this is basically just sauces tossed on fries and hot dogs”, Oh BOY will you not be happy with the next recipe

 

Let Slip the Fries of War

This is a recipe that I learned about, loved the idea of, and have wondered how to make for some time, and I am excited that it basically met all my desires, and was great. That recipe is pataje oorlog, or “War fries” in Dutch.

The recipe is: make some fries, and cover them in mayonnaise, peanut/satay sauce, diced onions, and, in some cases, ketchup. That’s it. This is literally just “fries with toppings”. The name comes from the fact that the condiments should be a big mess looking like a war zone.

The horror, the horror.

Now, could I have made my own satay sauce? Yes. Could I have made my own ketchup? Also yes. But instead, I used pre-made versions, because c’mon, I made FOUR recipes today, I need to sleep at some point. Also, I think a mistake worked out in my favor. It turns out we were actually OUT of normal ketchup, so I had to use some curry ketchup, which I think matched the satay sauce really well.

These fries are definitely the sweetest of the bunch, since the satay sauce is fairly sweet, and really, the flavor combination reminds me of like… a curry you’d give to a child. It’s complex, nutty, salty, and sweet, in a way that really hits a great medley. If you try NOTHING else on this, try this: of all of them, it’s the one you can most easily make with almost no effort (the Only thing you ‘need’ to make yourself is DICED ONION.) , and it’s surprisingly effective.

And that’s Fry-ght Night! Or Fry-ght Fest. Look, I’m not the most consistent dude. The point is, we’ve done a fry thing. Maybe we’ll make it an ongoing thing: there are DOZENS of regional versions of fries that could be fun to explore. Maybe we’ll talk about some of them on Thursday, unless something else blows my mind before then.

THURSDAY: BARRING SOMETHING SNATCHING MY FOCUS, SOME ‘FREAKY’ FRY DISHES FROM AROUND THE WORLD.

MONDAY: I THINK WE’RE GOING TO DO SOMETHING VEGGIE-FOCUSED. I’VE BEEN DOING A LOT OF MEAT AND DAIRY OVER THE LAST COUPLE MONTHS.

Recipes

Twice-Fried Fries

Ingredients

1 pound potatoes

1 quart vegetable oil

½ tsp salt

Preparation

1. Heat the oil to 325 degrees Fahrenheit (or 160 C). Julienne the potatoes, cutting to roughly 3/8th inch (1 cm) wide strips. Rinse briefly to remove excess starch, pat dry, and fry (in 2 batches if necessary), 5-10 minutes per batch, until cooked through, and very lightly browned.

2. Remove from the oil, and move to a cooling sheet where the oil can be absorbed/drained as you fry the second batch/heat up the oil. Turn the oil heat up to 375 (190) and cook for 2-4 minutes to brown the outside.

3. Once browned, shake off excess oil, sprinkle with salt, and allow to cool slightly before using.

Patatje Oorlog

Serves 2-4

Ingredients

1 batch Twice-Fried Fries

1 tablespoon mayonnaise

1 tablespoon satay sauce

Curry ketchup to taste

1 tablespoon diced onion

Preparation

1. Top fries with mayonnaise, satay, ketchup, and onion. Serve.

Salchipapas

Serves 2-4

Ingredients

1 batch Twice-Fried Fries

2 hot dogs, cut into 3-4 chunks apiece

Mayonnaise, ketchup, and aji Amarillo paste (or other mild hot sauce) to taste.

Preparation

1. Fry the hot-dogs for 2-4 minutes, until cooked through. Toss with the fries onto the plate to serve.

2. Dress with the toppings listed, and serve.

Poutine

Serves 2-4

Ingredients

1 batch Twice-Fried Fries

½ cup cheese curds

                Gravy

2 tablespoons butter

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1.5 teaspoons beef bouillon paste

1 pint beef broth

Salt and pepper to taste

Preparation

1. Start prepping the gravy, by melting the butter over medium heat and adding flour. Stir to incorporate, and cook for 1-2 minutes to form a blonde roux. Add the beef bouillon paste, and stir to incorporate. Add beef broth, stir to combine, and simmer over a medium-low heat until thickened.

2. Place fries on serving plate, and scatter over cheese curds. Pour over gravy, serve.