I have a confession to make: I have never been to Canada. I don’t have a good reason. But every time I’ve thought about going I just found reasons not to.
I was raised in upstate New York, and trips up north were routine. My friends went to Montreal and Toronto all the time, but not me. Once, when I was a kid, the entire family got in the car and my dad drove us to Niagara Falls, but we never crossed the border. That’s as close as I ever got. I think I have some sort of irrational fear of the place.
But I wanted to be a part of this Day of Canada Thingies, and I’m not sure why. Maybe it was to prove to myself that I don’t really have Canadaphobia. Maybe I wanted to impress Lala with something other than my lesbian tendencies toward knitbomb photos.
I thought hard, and since I love cooking so much, decided I’d write something about classic Canadian cuisine, a subject I knew nothing about. So I headed over to the interwebs and put the search engines into overdrive.
The first thing that came up was the Canadian Butter Tart. Sounds good, no? The name seems to be a fairly apt description: a flaky pastry surrounding a somewhat gooey and runny center of butter, brown sugar, corn syrup and some raisins or nuts. I’d give that a shot. I might even try making some this week.
The second recipe I found was for something called Tortiere, which while sounding uncomfortably close to the word “torture,” is nothing more than a meat pie of ground beef and pork traditionally served at Christmas. If a Canadian ever invited me over for Christmas dinner, I’d try it just to be nice.
Then I came across Beaver Tails, and though I could feel my anxiety level rising, it turns out they are nothing more than fried dough so big that they resemble said tails of said beaver. What’s not to like about fried dough? Beaver Tails seem to be a chain of fast-food type restaurants, but you can find recipes for the home-made versions online.
Poutine proved to be a bit of a challenge. To me, a french fry is one of the world’s most perfect foods, and when properly prepared, needs no accompaniment other than salt and a bit of Heinz ketchup. Poutine pushes the french fry envelope to the very edge by calling for toppings of fresh cheese curds (cheese curds?) and brown gravy. I’m sure it’s wonderful, although not for me. But then I don’t go for chili fries, cheese fries or even truffle fries.
Fish and Brewis is a “specialty” from Newfoundland that calls for reconstituted salt cod and a rock-hard bread called hardtack to be boiled until they’re edible, which would take an eternity in my book. They’re then served topped with scrunchions, which is fried salt pork with its rendered fat. I think the only way I’d give this a try is if I were starving.
Then came the stop-everything, you-can’t-make-me, no-way-in-hell, only-in-Canada recipe that still makes me shudder just to even consider it: flipper pie. Looks harmless enough, doesn’t it? But consider this: the recipe actually calls for flippers. No, not Flipper the dolphin. Flippers as in belonging to (gulp) seals. The very thought of it has re-tied my Canadaphobia into a knot that most likely will not ever be undone.
I’m sure it’s a wonderful place, that Canada, and I’m sure I’ll make it there at some point, but I’m going to need time to get over the whole flipper pie thing.
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