Indian Poutine
It’s been a couple years since I posted a recipe to my blog. Here’s what I had for lunch today. I call it “Indian poutine”.
First, have you ever noticed that some food styles or patterns appear in different cuisines? Like look at puffy fried bread. India has naan, Native Americans have fry bread, Cajuns have beignets, Mexicans (or maybe it’s more New Mexicans) have sopaipillas, and so on.
I have a knack for seeing patterns in things, and then spotting what doesn’t fit the pattern. I think this is probably related to being - as Brooke puts it - not on the (autism) spectrum, but damn close. If you’re in roughly my age range, you might remember the Sesame Street recurring segment that I call “One of these things is not like the other”. I loved that segment!
Anyhow, let’s talk about poutine. It’s a dish originally from Quebec, though some people dispute that. It’s now bar food all over Canada. The basic pattern is this:
- A bed of French fries, topped by
- Brown gravy, that includes
- Squeaky cheese curds, and optionally topped with
- Smoked meats
I love poutine. A few years back there was a food truck here in Denver that served it, but I think they went under during COVID.
Anyhow, being in the American Southwest, I noticed a similar local dish that has become popular the past decade or so. It is green chile fries. The basic pattern is this:
- A bed of French fries or tater tots, topped by
- Green chile sauce (by which I mean what we in Denver call “green chile” and not what New Mexicans call “green chile”)
- Lots of melty shredded cheese, such as cheddar, and optionally topped with
- Shredded pork
DCPA’s assessment of green chile fries in Denver
The two are the same basic food concept, just two different ethnic origins.
A few years back I had a flash of inspiration that resulted in what I’m now calling Indian poutine. The basic pattern is this:
- A bed of crispy tater tots, topped by
- Saag paneer, and optionally topped with
- Chicken 65
In case you don’t know…
Saag is an Indian dish of cooked spinach “gravy”. Paneer is a firm slightly squeaky Indian cheese. And saag paneer is just the two things together. Chicken 65 is a spicy dish of fried chicken pieces with a variety of spices.
So, that’s basically my recipe. I have no idea how to make saag paneer or Chicken 65, so I order them delivered from an Indian restaurants. I brown the tater tots in our air fryer. And then I put it all together to look something like this…
…which is what I had for lunch today.
At my last job, two of the four teams in our department were in India (different cities). My Indian coworkers got a big kick from my weird invention. I think they never imagined an American being so interested in innovating cuisine using Indian flavors.