Making good poutine starts with high quality fries. The fries used for this are Heston Blumenthal’s (Link to fries). These are hands down the best fries ever. They are so crispy that the fried coating shatters when you bite into them. The fries stand up well to the gravy. Making these takes quite a long time with multiple frying and cooling steps. The multiple steps in the process are time consuming but there is enough downtime to make the gravy and cheese curds. The cheese curd recipe is from Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll. The curds were super squeaky when bitten into and turned out well. The gravy was made by making a rue then incorporating some home made beef stock. The dish was topped with this gravy and some freshly chopped parsley.

This was project was done since no commercial product could be found. This was originally done with a wine box turned on its side with the lid removed. The box was getting a little worn out so a replacement was made. The replacement consists of 4″ square fence post cut to 12″ lengths. The 12″ lengths were attached together with construction adhesive.

Before:

After:

This was a fairly time consuming dish to prepare. This dish is lobster ravioli with homemade pasta in a brown butter sauce.

Steps:

1. cook 2 lobsters in a large pot and clean off meat. 
2. While cooking lobster also roast garlic in oven. Zest and juice a lemon and chop some parsley.
3. 

   

   Then mix the filling consisting of the lobster meat, lemon, parsley and  ricotta cheese.

4. Then make fresh pasta dough. Sheet the pasta cut it out and form the ravioli. While this is being done also brown some butter in a pan.
5. 

   

   

   Mix heavy cream with the browned butter. At the same time boil the ravioli. 

6. Finally mix sauce and pasta and serve:

Recipe from Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll 3rd Edition page 94.

Creamline Milk from Mooville Milk. This milk has better yield then normal pasteurized milk from the grocery store.

Rennet and starter:

A clever modification to hold the thermometer in the pot:

Curd in the press:

The press with weight applied. The press is constructed out of two cutting boards and some threaded rod. The “cheese mold” is a desk organizer with holes cut into it for drainage. An extra large empty metal can is used to press down on a plate inside the cheese mold.

Results:

Chicken stock made out of the whey: