Poutine Without the Fries! But not necessarily without the potatoe. . .

Every now and then, I have no choice but to experiment in the kitchen! I’m not a chef by any means, nor do I particularly love being in the kitchen. This means meals are fairly simple and plain for the most part, unless its festive time when I attempt a big meal with varying degrees of success and stress. I’ve served “burnt sacrifices” as the joke goes, on more than one occasion, just for reference.

Back when I was rereading and updating some of my blog articles, I rediscovered my article on the potatoe, and had to bring it over to my coaching site from the author site. It started out on the author blog as I was not yet studying for, let alone shifting into a new career as your Biblical Natural Health Coach. I had forgotten that partway through that article, the observation had been made that if potatoes are cooked and then cooled, the starch transitions to a slow-release state and the body isn’t as quick to convert it to blood sugar. This put the idea in my head to cook up a pot of potatoes, skins and all (because why would you throw out all that nutrition, right???), puree the cooked potatoe in some of it’s own water (to return some of the water-soluble vitamins that leeched into the water during cooking), and then freeze it in muffin-tins for use in smoothies. The idea for use in smoothies was because potatoe does thicken liquids such as gravies and other sauces.

Well. . . maybe it was the lack of yogurt, not sure, but using pureed potatoe instead of banana to thicken the smoothie went over rather grainy in texture! I didn’t like it AT ALL! Unfortunately, that means I now have two trays’ worth of pureed potatoe to do something with!

I thawed out two lumps, and thawed a 368ml tostito sauce jar of gravy and blended them together on the stove. That made for a very smooth, thick gravy, and then another idea popped into my head. As it was lunchtime, I figured, why not?

I make a vegan flatbread due to never knowing if I’ll react to eggs or not, and I’d made a new batch yesterday. I took two flatbread to the cutting board and cut them into strips akin to the general thickness of fries. Those were arranged on a plate. Next, I cut up some sausage I’d cooked for sandwich meat (why buy expensive cuts when you can cook and slice your own meat and use that instead?!) and scattered that over the flatbread fingers. The chunk of cheese that was left in the tub was enough for three slices’ worth, (in our house we allow no more than 4 slices per person per meal or we’d all turn into cheese-a-holics very quickly!!!) so I broke that up into smaller chunks and scattered that over the plate and then poured the potato-thickened gravy over it all.

It tasted quite nice! The benefits to this meal are many:

1) No yeast in the flatbread means no courting of related infections in the digestive tract or reproductive regions. Modern society eats way too much yeast and that can create issues, particularly for women.

2) No store-bought or oil-fried potatoe fries. Store-bought are often coated in canola oil before you bring them home to better cook in the oven. Using a deepfryer or oil heated in a frying pan can change the fats in the oil into tryglycerides, which are not helpful to the human body.

If you want to have fries, chop the potatoe yourself and don’t use oil to fry them. Either cook them in an air fryer basket, or in the oven without any oil. If in the oven, cook at 425F, flipping occasionally, until they start to brown. This can take up to 45 minutes depending on the oven. Baking them often causes them to lose mass, so you’ll be eating more to get the same content as if they’d been deepfried.

3) Actual animal-based cheese contains a myriad of health benefits that aren’t ruined by browning. Pouring hot gravy over the cheese gently encourages melt and keeps those nutrients intact.

4) Gravy is a great way to enjoy the benefits of the fats and fat-soluble nutrients that leave meat while it cooks. Don’t use corn starch as your thickener as it is most likely GMO’d unfortunately. If you know a brand made from non-GMO corn, use that instead. You can also thicken gravy by making a roo with flour and water and adding that to the pot, OR, you can add pureed potatoe to thicken it. The left-over gravy I’d made got the double treatment, as I added pureed potatoe to it to see how well it further thickened the gravy, as the previous round wasn’t very thick. By adding potatoe to the gravy, you are getting a real nutritional/medicinal bang!

Note when making your gravy, don’t add OXO to it! This is a highly refined product that uses refined table salt among it’s other ingredients. Instead, add rock (pink) salt and pepper to enhance flavours.

5) If you are like my son and add sea or rock salt to everything, now you’ve added trace minerals to your dish. It may be best to avoid sea salt now that we are aware of the pervasiveness of micro-plastics. If you are like me and add black pepper to everything, you’ve enhanced the nutritional/medicinal qualities of your dish with black pepper’s constituent known as Pipperine.

So my recipe for Flatbread Poutine:

Ingredients:

2 flatbread rounds
Chopped, cooked meat of your choice
4 slices of cheese broken up or equivalent
Left-over gravy, or left-over cooked meat juices
Pureed, cooled potatoe (yes, pureed skins and all)

NOTE: Amounts are not given for meat, gravy or potatoe as this is determined by how much you want for your meal, I had 1.5 cups of left-over gravy and half to 3/4 cup of pureed potatoe and still put 1/5cups of potatoed gravy back in the fridge. . . for context.

Instructions:
Add meat juices or gravy and pureed potatoe to a small pot and heat through, stirring constantly to blend and keep from burning. Suggested temp: medium heat. When gravy is smooth, remove from heat and set aside.

Stack flatbread and cut into half inch wide strips. Remove shorter strips, then cut across the remaining strips in half again, unless you like long fries, then don’t cut them in half.

Arrange flatbread fingers on a plate like a heap of fries.

Using a cheese slicer, or alternatively, using a knife and cutting thinly, prepare 4 slices of cheese, or cut off the equivalent of 4 slices from the block. Break into small pieces and scatter over the flatbread fingers.

Scatter your chopped, cooked meat over the flatbread fingers.

If you like your onions or mushrooms, chop and scatter those at this stage.

Take a spoon and ladle out gravy over everything on the plate, completely covering or mostly covering the flatbread fingers in the process. Be sure the bits of cheese are covered so the heat of the gravy can begin melting them. Any remaining gravy can be scraped into a container and placed in the fridge for next time.

Take your salt or pepper shaker/grinder, and sprinkle over your dish to taste.

Enjoy.

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