{"id":40632,"date":"2017-10-29T03:00:10","date_gmt":"2017-10-29T07:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=40632"},"modified":"2017-10-28T11:29:16","modified_gmt":"2017-10-28T15:29:16","slug":"the-poutine-crisis-toronto-is-living-a-cheese-curd-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/10\/29\/the-poutine-crisis-toronto-is-living-a-cheese-curd-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"The Poutine crisis – “Toronto is living a cheese curd lie”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Toronto loves to adopt anything trendy and try to claim it as its own. Poutine, an imported delicacy from Quebec, early on was lovingly described as “the culinary equivalent of having unprotected sex with a stripper in the parking lot of a truck stop in eastern Quebec”, yet has been culturally appropriated as part of Toronto’s myriad of “local” dishes. Yet, according to this explosive investigatory report by Jake Edmiston<\/a>, the so-called poutine that Toronto loves is … falsely labelled, inadequate, lacking a key component:<\/p>\n

Some time ago, I realized that in Toronto, the cheese curds do not squeak. And cheese curds that do not squeak are a dangerous thing. They can trick you into thinking that cheese curds are just chopped-up cheese. The whole idea, to those unlucky enough to have never had a good one, must seem absurd: Eating cheese by itself, piece by piece in the same compulsive way that someone eats more chips than they need.<\/p>\n

Think of the nightmare lived by a man scouring a city for chips that crunch but finding each bag stale. I am him.<\/p>\n

As food-obsessed as it is, Toronto is living a cheese curd lie. It\u2019s not always a popular assessment, though. One local cheesemonger took it rather badly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWho said that?\u201d Afrim Pristine, the ma\u00eetre fromager at Cheese Boutique, demanded over the phone earlier this month.<\/p>\n

\u201cI say that,\u201d I replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou say that?\u201d he said, confused. \u201cHave you been to the Cheese Boutique?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t had your cheese curds yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo why would you say that?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t said it in print yet. I\u2019m just saying that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay. Um, I think you\u2019re very, very wrong,\u201d he said. \u201cI think you\u2019re incredibly wrong. To say that you can\u2019t find good cheese curds in Toronto, I think, is crazy, actually.\u201d<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Curds are the butterflies of the cheese world \u2014 beautiful, transcendent, but only for an instant. They offer the rare example of cheese reaching its full expression as a snack unto itself, so airy and texturally complex that it is liberated from the usual dependence on crackers or bread or wine. Curds have been spared all the pressing and squeezing that occurs in the late stages of the cheddar-making process. They\u2019re pulled right from the vat before any of that happens, still full of air and whey. That\u2019s what makes them so much different than the cubes of mild cheddar beside the slices of salami on your cheese tray. Not for long. As that moisture seeps out over time, they inch closer to their cubed cousins, closer to ordinary. The squeak is, really, the only thing separating the two.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

H\/T to James Bow<\/a> for the link.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Toronto loves to adopt anything trendy and try to claim it as its own. Poutine, an imported delicacy from Quebec, early on was lovingly described as “the culinary equivalent of having unprotected sex with a stripper in the parking lot of a truck stop in eastern Quebec”, yet has been culturally appropriated as part of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,74,73],"tags":[1126,156,113],"class_list":["post-40632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-food","category-randomness","tag-culturalappropriation","tag-fail","tag-quebec"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-azm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40632"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40636,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40632\/revisions\/40636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}