Oven Fry Poutine with New York Cheese Curds

I saw a selection of Yancey's Fancy(Corfu, NY) cheese curds at the local P-Chop's last night while I was stocking up on goodies for when the wife and daughter get sprung from the hospital. I love cheese curds (kudos on the Upstate New York shout out in the first sentence of the Wiki), I usually buy the Heluva Good brand curds at Stewart's along with some crackers or bread for a quick lunch. These particular cheese curds came in a few flavors (buffalo, garlic, etc...), I chose horseradish. They sounded pretty tasty to me.



The curds looked pretty good, some large and some small. The flavor and texture were decent with a mild horseradish heat.



As I said before, I mainly consume cheese curds raw as a snack. However, the true test of a good curd is how it melts. I decided to whip up a quick batch of pseudo-poutine. Poutine is the classic Canadian version of gravy cheese fries comprised of pommes frites, curd, and gravy. I prefer the New York/New Jersey diner "disco fries" which are french fries, mozzarella, and cheap brown gravy. Not having a deep fryer handy I made some oven fries out of a random sweet potato and standard russet that I had in the crisper. I threw a few curds on top of the fries and topped with some piping hot gravy. This is what it looked like seconds after the gravy pour.



Now, the beauty of curds is the ease with which they melt. This next picture is after about a minute or two, with no heat save that from the fries and the gravy.



See how deliciously the curds have melted? Digging in, I found the Yancey's Fancey cheese to be superbly velvety, the perfect texture for poutine. I especially liked how the horseradish cheese paired with the sweetness of the sweet potatoes. These cheese curds get two thumbs up from me, I thoroughly enjoyed this little dish of carbs and fat.