Oh, it's lard

That's why the Golden Palace egg rolls are so fabulous. They are deep-fried in lard. Just read a story about how people were lined up around the block to buy half-price anniversary special egg rolls yesterday at this legendary west Ottawa restaurant. In it they revealed a few mundane ingredients, but forget the celery, onion and pork. No, it was the deep frying in the lard that was the "ah ha" moment for me.

You can't really beat lard. Bacon fat comes close, but lard is the queen of the fats. We used to visit friends for a week at their cottage every year and the hostess was always on some diet or other. One year it was "sugar busters"; another it was "nothing white"; the next it was "the zone". In fact, it was the only holiday I ever went on during which I actually lost weight! But the deal was that her pies were to die for -- mainly the crust. Assuming she wouldn't dare use anything but vegetable oil, I could not figure it out? Until I spotted the Tenderflake hidden away in a corner of the fridge. Oh yeah, it was lard. I confronted her and she swore me to secrecy (sorry about that, my dear).

But back to the egg rolls. We have another pencil-thin friend who gives wonderful cocktail parties. But to maintain the pencil look, she serves celery and poached salmon and stuff. (Let's face it, poached salmon is pretty tasteless, unless you smother it in tartar sauce and slap it onto a fatty cracker; celery's allure goes without saying and if it didn't have the crunch you wouldn't talk to it.) Anyway, rushing out the door I said to B, "We can't go empty-handed, let's stop at the Golden Palace and I'll grab a few egg rolls." You would think I had arrived bearing pure gold. People smelt them before they had seen them -- it's that lard thing again -- and wolfed them in about three minutes. "Why didn't you bring more?" The salmon was summarily abandoned and left to dry out at its bland corners. As I said, lard is queen.