Hooray! My story “Food Truck of the Zombie Apocalypse” has been accepted by Silvia Moreno-Garcia for the Dead North anthology. It’s about a woman who sells poutine from her food truck in the aftermath of the zombie apocalypse.
I first learned about poutine when we went to Calgary for the World Fantasy Convention in 2008. Gravy and french fries? Holy crap, sign me up. We only had the poutine at the hotel bar, and while I’m sure there are much more delicious poutine offerings elsewhere in Canada, it was enough to make me a fan.
So when I heard Silvia was doing an anthology of Canadian zombie stories, I knew I was going to write about poutine.
Salt Lake City only has one restaurant serving poutine that we could find, and it wasn’t very good, so we had no choice but to make our own. Luckily, it’s not hard. Here’s how.
I start by making my own vegetable stock (yeah, not down with the meat, here): onions and garlic and carrots and celery and other good stuff, cooked for an hour or two or three until I get a rich golden stock. If we’re in a hurry, I use Better than Bouillon not chicken base, which works pretty damn well.
Next, start the gravy: melt butter, stir in brown rice flour (no gluten here, either) and cook for a few minutes, then slowly add the delicious stock, stirring constantly. The ratio is 1 TBS butter to 1 TBS flour to 1 cup stock; scale according to your needs. Cook another 5 or 10 minutes, stirring often, until properly thick. Add additional seasonings as desired. I suppose you could make gravy from a package, but it’s a lot tastier to do it from scratch, and not much more effort.
Meanwhile, send your husband out to buy fries, and shred the cheese curds. When the fries appear, sprinkle with cheese curds, and top with gravy.
DINNER! Lock the door to hold off the zombie hordes, and chow down.
heh! thanks. 🙂
I think when the book is released, I’m going to go all out and make all the ingredients from scratch. My own cheese curds! Cut and cook my own fries! HARDCORE.