Smoked Beef

 

When I was writing my newspaper column, I got an email from a reader who said he didn’t like French food.  It seems he’d been to Montreal and gotten a bad meal.  I told him French Canadians are French the way I’m English.  I have English ancestors, and I speak the English language, although not the same way the English do.  The food ways of my culture have strayed from those traditional in England. I don’t eat bangers and mash or spotted dick.

Having been in the business, I know writers are oppressed by deadlines and under pressure to find something to say.  When I read that driving to Montreal is like visiting Paris without the airfare, I roll my eyes.  They speak French in Montreal, but Paris it ain’t. 

In Canada French cooking is an imported cuisine the same way it is in Boston or Dallas.  Like my reader, I’ve had some disappointments.  On my latest visit, I hit the jackpot because I chose a local delicacy for which the city has become known – smoked beef. 

I had some time waiting for a train and made my way to Reuben’s Delicatessen at 1116 Rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest. Behind the counter a man was hand cutting pink slices of succulent beef which are stacked on bread and served with fries.  You can get the regular, which is mountainous, or you can get the large.  

The meat is tender, juicy and flavorful, and I found I could eat more than I thought at f first.  In fact I recommend Reuben’s for a Montreal lunch, and would go there again for the same meal.  The flavor of the beef is slightly spicy and lightly smoked.  As a native Canadian delicacy, I give it top rating. 

For dessert get the cheesecake. It is lighter than the New York style and easy to eat after stuffing yourself on a sandwich.

Prince Edward Island

When you get to my age, you’ve been wrong so many times, you get so you expect it. I didn’t think you could get great food on Prince Edward Island.  After all, who ever heard of P.E.I .cuisine?  I predicted that my visit was certainly not going to be gastro-tourism.  I’d heard it is nice there, but at mealtime I expected to be underwhelmed.

I was pleasantly not surprised to find I’d added one more faulty prediction to my lengthening list. Nice is an appropriate adjective for PEI.  It’s an island of rolling farmland.  There are fields of corn, but it isn’t Iowa.  These are family farms.   There are lovely beaches, a light house or two, and very little else to attract crowds.  The people are friendly. 

Nothing these days is trendier than locavore cuisine, but on Prince Edward Island it’s just what they’ve always had.  Why would they go elsewhere to get ingredients?  Of course the farming is sustainable. It has to be.  Since you’re on an island, the seafood is fresh.  The cooking is simple, but what better way to treat such amazing food?

The hottest tourist attraction on the island is the town of Cavendish, the home of Anne of Green Gables.  Well of course Anne Shirley is a fictional character, but her creator, Lucy Maud Montgomery, lived there, and the house that inspired her story is preserved. 

The book Anne of Green Gables so charmed Annette in her childhood that she had always wanted to visit Prince Edward Island, so there we were.  Even I, who have read the book, felt a pang when I explored the house and came to door of Anne’s room.  Yes I know Anne is a made up person and never lived in a room.  Even Lucy Montgomery never lived in the house, so it wasn’t her room either, but sometimes you forget reality when you’re under the spell of a good book. 

This being the biggest tourist attraction in the province, there are collateral lures. I was a little disturbed to see the bright plastic of Shining Waters Fun Park and even more so to find that Cavendish has its own Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum, where you can see a two-headed sheep, a hand painted vampire bat, and a twenty foot section of the Berlin Wall. 

My alarm dissolved when I realized that’s about all the blight there is.The area is like Cape Cod as envisioned by Patty Paige. There are no condos or McMansions or even cottage clutter to block your ocean view.  There are tourist cabins, but few motels.  There’s not a fast food restaurant in sight. If your children are bored with all the scenery, they can play miniature golf. 

And when you have explored the Haunted Wood and wandered down Lover’s lane, which were named by the young Prince Edward Island author whose sweet naiveté charmed thousands, you can have dinner at Chez Yvonne’s. It is a sizable restaurant with a deck. Located as it is in the center of a tourist area, one might assume that its owner would figure that his patronage consisted of one-time visitors, who wouldn’t be back no matter how good the food.  But if you order turkey soup, the turkey is fresh killed from the farm of a relative.  The fish is brought daily to local wharfs, and the deserts are freshly made.

Our waitress was so friendly, she was thankful that it was September, and the crowds had vanished so she had time to find out where we were from and what we thought of her island home.  Chez Yvonne’s was about to close for the season , and the mistress of the tiny nearby post office said that in a few weeks you could fire a cannon down Route 6 without the danger of hitting anyone. 

There is still a narrow road in Plymouth that in my father’s youth was the way to Cape Cod.  There is a grade called Blacksnake hill that is so steep they used to drive the Model T’s up backwards so the fuel tank behind the driver would be above the motor and the gravity feed would still bring gas to the engine.  The date I think about is 1910, the year my house was built and the insurance agency I used to own was bought by my Grandfather.  Instead of a park on Water Street, there were wharfs and ships chandleries, and seamen’s saloons. 

I like to imagine Plymouth and Cape Cod as they must have been in those days, and the closest I can come to it is Prince Edward Island.  I want to go back and spend more time getting to know the people, wandering the countryside, and eating the beautiful food.  The twenty-first century looms offshore.  It has already enveloped much of Nova Scotia, but the countryside of Anne Shirley still exists, and it is worth the trip.

Poutine

I put off trying poutine until my last day in Canada.  There were lots of good things to eat, and even when I braced my taste buds for the ordeal, there were some very delectable Digby clams I could have ordered instead. Poutine is french fries soaked in gravy accompanied by cheese curds.    It’s adored in Montreal where the dish originated and has spread throughout Canada. It is reportedly making inroads into the United States.  I considered it my duty to try some. 

I had a food snob’s aversion to poutine, but having tasted it, I must admit it has a certain appeal.  I knew I was consuming so much fat and salt the mere thought of it would give the nutritionist at the Jordan Hospital Cardiac Rehab a case of uncontrollable shakes and possibly send her into a catatonic state.  I knew I should shove it away and order a salad with the dressing on the side, but as with other junk food, one bite invited another, and before I knew it I had cleaned my plate. 

Poutine is comfort food.  It is soft, warm, salty, and loaded with fat.  The gravy soaks the fries so they are no longer crisp, and it is unevenly distributed so the texture varies as you eat.  There are many versions to be had.  If oil fried potatoes and fat-based gravy aren’t rich enough for you, you can get poutine with bacon – sometimes with pulled pork and bacon.  I’ve heard some people eat fries with spaghetti sauce and melted mozzarella, although I haven’t witnessed this with my own eyes.  According to Wikipedia, poutine is sometimes served with lobster, shrimp, duck, lamb, or rabbit.   There are plainly depths to be plumbed before a poutine addict hits bottom.

Like chili and pizza, there’s no definite recipe, and I’m sorry to say mine had melted cheese instead of the cheese curds, which I’m told squeak when you bite them.  This is a traveler’s tale and not a learned treatise.  Further research is definitely required.  

Man vs. Mouse

Let me say at the outset it wasn’t my idea.  It was a scheme conceived by an engineer.  I don’t mean a train driver; he’s a brainy type who creates elaborate solutions to simple problems.  Our summer cottage is close to nature, and that includes mice.  Once in a while one of them gets in and scampers about in the loft above where we sleep.  With this I can deal. 

The solution was a two-pronged attack using the latest technology.  First he would build a barrier against invasion using cans of mouse-proof foam that he would squirt into every chink.  The foam would harden into an impenetrable solid.  The propellant smelled toxic, but I suppose it wasn’t.  Mice, the engineer felt, are a problem, and problems are meant to be solved.  I endured the odor without comment. 

The second defense was a system of traps, which consisted of plastic trays full of stickum.  The mouse would wander into the tray and be held fast by the goo.  No bait was needed.  I felt allowing the poor creature to die of starvation, or more likely dehydration, was cruel.  My sin, however grievous, was one of omission.  It was, of course, my cottage, but the engineer was adamant about the need and his methods.  I allowed the plan to go forward, and when it had been carried out, I left the traps in place.

During the nights of an entire month Annette and I enjoyed the slumber of the innocent.  There was no scampering of tiny feet amplified by the floorboards of the loft above our heads.  I concluded that the barrier had worked. I now summered in a mouse-proof cottage, which was a good thing.  Then, one night we were awakened by a terrifying racket. 

This was no familiar skitter at which we could smile and go back to sleep.  Something strange was in the house.  We are a family that believes in the equality of the sexes when there are dishes to be done, but at this midnight hour the issue was not brought up.   I got out of bed to investigate.  Out at the beach we are off the grid and live without the benefit of electric lights, but I had a heavy flashlight that could double as a club.  I seized it and sallied fourth. 

The noise was coming from the loft.  I climbed the iron ladder and had a look around.  There had been four of the sticky mousetraps near the top of the ladder; now there were three.  I shone the light around, but I couldn’t see where the missing trap had gone.  However, I went back down and reported to Annette that my reconnaissance had determined the 500 pound gorilla theory could be crossed from the list. 

There had been silence while I was moving around, but now the noise resumed.  With the clue of the missing trap, I was able to identify the cause.  A plastic tray was being dragged across the floor.  If we were to get any sleep, something had to be done.  Once again I climbed the ladder to the loft.

I shone the light systematically, and this time I saw him.  He was a plump and vigorous creature, but definitely a mouse of the species with which we are familiar.  He had somehow gotten his hindquarters into the goo and had been dragging the trap around by running with his front feet.   The mouse twisted its body and looked with terror in my direction.  I was an enormous beast wielding a ray of sunlight that pierced the soft and comforting darkness.  I was the personification of rodent doom.

I, on the other hand, felt no corresponding thrill of power. I needed a battle plan.  The loft is used for storage, and an adult human cannot walk about in it fully erect.  The mouse was over by the eaves.  I could crawl on my hands and knees and reach him.  I could probably overtake him, if he attempted to flee.  I could grab the trap from the side away from the mouse and carry it with my hand out of range of his tiny teeth. 

There would plainly be difficulties.  I imagined proceeding on all fours back to the ladder with the trap in one hand and the flashlight in the other. I had a smaller flashlight I could hold in my mouth, but images of the surgical procedure it would take to remove it from my trachea flashed through my mind.  And how was I to get down the ladder?

I could hang onto the ladder with one hand, but I’m not as agile as I once was.  Holding the trap away from myself during the descent seemed difficult, and I didn’t know what parts of my scantily-clad body might come within range of the rodent’s ravening jaws.

I could throw the trap and its victim over the side onto the floor below, but that seemed cruel.  There was also the danger that the landing would jolt the mouse free, and I would have the task of chasing a sticky and terrified creature around the cottage in the presence of a woman whose composure would be severely challenged. 

Of course I could hand the trap down to Annette who could take it out onto the dunes, where its occupant would eventually exhaust himself and die a painful and gritty death. I rejected that option without extensive thought.

 I returned to the bedroom.  The scraping continued too loud to be ignored.  We had obligations the next day and needed to sleep.  We dressed, locked the cottage, and beat an ignominious retreat.  It was 2:30 when we sank into slumber in our year-round home.

Aided by daylight, and ready with a revised strategy, I resumed the field of battle with the dawn. I was armed with a lawn rake to fish the trap from under the eave and a bag to transport it.  I reasoned that the mouse would still be alive. He was a robust opponent and wouldn’t have starved. I planned to drown him in the ocean.  Annette was shocked at cruelty I have not heretofore displayed, but I thought the alternate plan of bashing him with a beach stone would be more apt to haunt my nightmares in the years to come.

The honorable hunter tracks his wounded prey. Even if it’s a lion that has retreated into a thicket and may charge from hiding, he doesn’t leave it to suffer. It was with this thought that I mounted the ladder to the loft. 

The trap wasn’t where I’d seen it last.  I stalked it diligently.  I moved an inflatable bed, two enameled lobster cookers, and some plastic dishes with seaside designs.  And there was the trap.  It held patches of mouse fur, but no body parts or blood. My adversary was free. Presumably he ran through the unblocked passage and out into the wild.

If he could talk, what a story he'd have to tell – an evil snare, a sunlight wielding giant, and at last escape. Proudly displaying his stickiness and bald spots, he would become famous from Bert’s Cove to Bug Light.  Awed mouselings would pass the tale down the generations. It was he who triumphed, and I raise my glass to him.