1,000 Foods To Eat Before You Die: A Food Lover's Life List (161 page)

American loyalty may belong to Nestlé’s novelty candy bar Butterfinger, but objective and discerning palates would surely hand the laurels to Crispy Crunch, the treat Cadbury produces only in Canada. It was invented in 1912 by Harold Oswin, a Canadian confectioner who longed to combine chocolate and peanut butter. After several owners, Crispy Crunch was purchased by the British firm Cadbury in 1996, and somewhere along the way this sweet and crunchy teaser’s original, plump log shape was redesigned.

Once out of their bright wrappers, Butterfinger and Crispy Crunch look very much alike; both are flat, slim, chocolate-covered five-and-half-inch strips with a center of peanuts in one of two textures. But the Cadbury bar is made of a more appealing, slightly darker chocolate and reveals a finer layered texture within—a firmer, crackling sort of taffy around a velvety fluff of peanuts. Where the flavor of Butterfinger is somewhat bland and simplistically sweet, Crispy Crunch provides an intriguing blend of saltiness, comforting sweetness, and the merest hint of bitterness, all of which add up to a superior candy.

Ingredients lists on both wrappers indicate that we are talking about junk food here, the kind of guilty pleasures that recall childhood indulgences. Some junk, however, is better than the rest, and Cadbury also earns points for vernacular—because everything on its wrapper appears in both French and English, as proscribed by law throughout the French-speaking provinces of Canada. And, to be sure, it all sounds better in French, what with “candy” as
friandise
, “nutrition facts” as
valeur nutritive
, “fat” as
lipids
, and carbohydrates as
glucides.
Alas, calories remain calories: 240 for the Crispy Crunch, 270 for Butterfinger.

Mail order:
amazon.com (search cadbury crispy crunch).
Tip:
Freezing Crispy Crunch bars adds a lively textural crackle. No need to defrost before eating, but break off pieces or cut the bar with a knife if you fear for your teeth. Lightly crushed, frozen Crispy Crunch makes an indecently beguiling topping on scoops of vanilla or chocolate ice cream.
See also:
Frozen Milky Way
;
Fried Mars Bar
.

Poutine is even served at Canadian McDonald’s.

If someone offered you a heaping plateful of French fries drowned to sogginess in brown gravy and dotted with pale clumps of soft, barely creamy cheese, what would you do? Although some high-minded gastronomes might push it all away,
the eater who digs in will be rewarded with a decadent mess of comfort foods. Happily the hoi polloi seem to be outnumbering the hoity-toity, and Quebec’s increasingly popular poutine (poo-TEEN) is showing up not only all over Canada but in many parts of the U.S., in food trucks, market stands, and restaurants both casual and fancy.

This soppy treat is said to have originated in Quebec in the early 1950s, taking its name from the French
boudin
, referring to the puddinglike meat-and-blood fillings of sausages. And pudding is what poutine gets close to becoming, as the brown gravy soaks into fried potatoes. A further softening accent comes from the fresh, snowy cheese curds that melt slightly and lend a measure of gooey squeaky-ness to the stringy proceedings.

Elegant variations do turn up. In Montreal, the restaurant Au Pied de Cochon (see
listing
) has a version that includes foie gras, and also a Japanese-style sushi
temaki
roll enfolding the standard ingredients. In that same city, La Banquise offers twenty-eight variations on the poutine theme, including additions of hot dogs, bacon, and ethnic variations like the Italian (meat sauce), the Sichuan (highly spiced dandan noodles), the French La Danse (chicken, bacon, onions, and pepper sauce), and the Latino La Taquise (guacamole, sour cream, and tomatoes).

Pay your money and take your choice, but don’t write off poutine until you’ve tried it.

Where:
In Montreal
, Au Pied de Cochon, tel 514-281-1114,
restaurantaupieddecochon.ca
; La Banquise, tel 514-525-2415,
labanquise.com
;
in Quebec
, Aux Anciens Canadiens, tel 418-692-1627,
auxancienscanadiens.qc.ca
;
in New York
, Shopsin’s, tel 212-924-5160,
shopsins.com
;
in New York and Brooklyn
, Mile End Deli,
mileenddeli.com
;
in Boston
, The Beehive, tel 617-423-0069,
beehiveboston.com
;
in Portland, ME
, Duckfat, tel 207-774-8080,
duckfat.com
;
in Chicago
, The Bad Apple, tel 773-360-8406,
badapplebar.com
;
in Austin, TX
, Banger’s, tel 512-386-1656,
bangersaustin.com
;
in Los Angeles
, Animal, tel 323-782-9225,
animalrestaurant.com
.
Further information and recipes:
From Pemmican to Poutine
by Suman Roy and Brooke Ali (2010);
saveur.com
(search poutine);
food.com
(search real canadian poutine).

A pastry treat that should appeal to just about everyone who loves blueberries,
shritzlach
oddly remains a very local Jewish specialty in the lively and entertaining city of Toronto. (Perhaps the bun’s none-too-mellifluous name has something to do with its relative obscurity.) Barely known even in other parts of Canada, a shritzlach looks for all the world like a puffy half-football. Crisp-crusted, yeasty pastry enfolds a
luscious squoosh of juicy, glistening, tart-sweet blueberries. Enjoying them without dribbling the sparkling purple-blue juices onto ties or shirt fronts requires a certain amount of skill.

Although proper shritzlach can be made with frozen or canned blueberries, the best examples are available in summer when the fresh, winey Canadian blueberries are in season. Briefly simmered to silken softness with sugar and cornstarch, they are delicious when scented with cinnamon and a refreshing splash of lemon juice. Rolled-out yeast dough is cut into five-inch lengths, then blueberry filling is spooned onto each and the dough is folded over before being crimped and baked. Best served cozily warm from the oven and doused with heavy sweet cream or topped with vanilla ice cream, the shritzlach makes for an elegant fork-and-plate dessert. But it is almost as good at room temperature, eaten—carefully—out of hand with coffee, tea, or a glass of milk.

Locating culinary origins can be hazardous guesswork, but shritzlach may be related to the Polish dessert
czarna jagoda
(blueberries)
tort
, also known as
joagodzianki
, possibly brought to Canada by Jewish immigrants from Poland. The original dish consists of cooked and sweetened fruit spooned into a deep dish lined with a thick, baking-powder-leavened batter. As the dessert bakes, the batter rises and wraps over the berries to form a sort of cobbler.

Where:
In Toronto
, Eglinton Café & Bakery, tel 416-782-2891; Kiva’s Bagels, tel 416-663-9933,
kivasbagels.ca
; Harbord Bakery, tel 416-922-5767,
harbordbakery.ca
.
Further information and recipes:
The World of Jewish Cooking
by Gil Marks (1996);
Jewish Food
by Matthew Goodman (2005);
Inside the Jewish Bakery
by Stanley Ginsberg and Norman Berg (2011);
mymommashands.com
(search toronto blueberry buns);
jewishfood-list.com
(click Recipes, then Breads, then Buns, Blueberry).

Pastrami is generally acknowledged to be a Romanian invention, a beef cure achieved by first pickling and then smoking fat and juicy cuts of brisket and finishing them off with a heady coating of peppercorns and spices (see
listing
). Done in the New York Jewish deli style, it’s a softly grainy, juicy, peppery, and garlic-scented favorite. But up in Montreal in 1928, Reuben Schwartz, an immigrant from Romania, prepared something that, in his recollection, was closer to the native product. Schwartz’s, the deli that he opened, still operates in its original location, and there the word
pastrami
is never used, except perhaps by untutored tourists. Rather it is designated smoked meat—
viande fumé
in French, the required language of Quebec province—and categorized as
Charcuterie Hébraïque
, or Hebrew characuterie.

Unlike New York pastrami, smoked meat is a firmer product that manages to emit some dewy moisture, but has a far more intense smoke flavor. Although smoked meat is produced elsewhere in Canada and now in New York, the super-casual Schwartz’s, with its menu of lusty meat sandwiches and dishes, should be the maiden stop on the smoked meat tour, simply to establish standards. There it is prepared as it always has been, with prime beef brisket
marinated for ten days in an herb and spice mixture, then freshly smoked daily. What results is meat that falls somewhere between what the Swiss call
bündnerfleisch
(see
listing
), what the Italians call
bresaola
, and, just barely, what New Yorkers recognize as “real” pastrami.

Perhaps they always will remain skeptical, but smoked meat certainly deserves a chance.

Where:
In Montreal
, Schwartz’s, tel 514-842-4813,
schwartzsdeli.com
;
in New York and Brooklyn
, Mile End Deli,
mileenddeli.com
;
in Oakland, CA
, Augie’s Montreal Smoke Meat pop-up in Beauty’s Bagel Shop, tel 510-776-7049.
Mail order:
amazon.com (search smoked montreal beef brisket).
Further information and recipes:
meatwave.com
(search montreal smoked meat).
Tip:
Sliced and packaged smoked meat should be gently steamed back to life, following the instructions on the package; it is not meant to be eaten cold.

Chef Susur Lee is affiliated with over twenty restaurants.

Innovative chefs are inspired by various influences. Some long to imitate current culinary trends; others start from a grasp of science and technology; and more, one hopes, begin by drawing upon the cuisine or cuisines that they have been rooted in, whether during childhood or as grown-ups who have spent time in some foreign place. No matter how far such anchored chefs deviate from their backgrounds, they always seem to have a better framework for creating something that might be called new. No chef working today exemplifies that more than Susur Lee, born in China and trained in Hong Kong, where he became the chef at the legendary Peninsula Hotel on Kowloon.

From there he emigrated to Toronto, eventually winning acclaim for the Chinese-informed dishes he created at his first restaurant, Lotus. He went on to New York’s Lower East Side and Washington, DC, where he turned out brightly festive, silken rainbow vegetable salads, such as the slivered cucumber with lotus root, avocado, and persimmons; crispy lobster deep-fried under a veneer of panko crumbs; juicy shrimp and pork dumplings in flower shapes never imagined by nature; and savory pork specialties, all at his restaurants Shang and Zentan. Although those last two closed much too soon, Lee still has TungLok Heen in Singapore, and the restaurants Lee and Bent are flourishing in his adopted city of Toronto. He is also planning a new complex in New York’s One World Trade Center.

Lean, energetic, and charismatic, Susur Lee has starred on
Iron Chef America
, which has no doubt lured a wider array of diners to his tables. There they will find,
among other enticements, dishes such as his duck confit rolled around crunchy nuts and bittersweet dried pineapple in the style of sushi, and silky black cod caramelized with Chinese fruit jams for a burnished sweet flavor, a winner similar to his New York dish of crisp-skinned chicken enhanced with mellow onion preserves. Cool fruit sorbets, mango and passion fruit
panna cotta
, and the French/Chinese Tong Yuen, a cross between sweet rice dumplings and chocolate nougat, are all well worth leaving room for.