Month: September 2012

I saw this wall mural today — POUTINE DONUTS MILKSHAKES — on the side of Fancy Frank’s Gourmet Hot Dogs, the soon-to-be-opened gourmet hot dog restaurant on the north side of College Street, just east of Augusta. I like the way they’re thinking.

NOOOOOO! First the Great Canadian maple syrup heist, now this terrible, terrible news.

The recipe for a wonderful evening: take a lovely dinner date…

…and bring her to this place — an unmarked restaurant on Montreal’s Avenue Duluth, just east of Berri:

It’s Au Pied de Cochon (French for “At the Pig’s Foot”), Montreal’s best-known restaurant, run by Martin Picard, Montreal’s best-known chef. Picard’s hailed as the man who’s changing Canada’s culinary identity, and he’s a personal hero of none other than supreme foodie (and chef himself) Anthony Bourdain.

Here’s a segment from Bourdain’s show, No Reservations, featuring Martin and Au Pied de Cochon:

It took a little work, but I managed to snag a much-coveted reservation for two at Au Pied de Cochon last Saturday night. I specifically asked for a seat at the bar with a view of the kitchen. Most people consider it to be the seating area of last resort, but I think of it as the chef’s table, prime seats with a perfect view of the chaotic ballet of cookery. It also lets me sit right beside my lovely dinner companion.

It’s also conveniently close to the beer!

For our appetizer, we had the restaurant’s famous poutine with foie gras.

This poutine comes with two different gravies: a high-end version of the standard dark brown sauce that we’ve all come to know and love, and a thicker, coffee-coloured made of foie gras.

Such a dish calls for a close-up shot:

In case you wanted to try and make Au Pied de Cochon’s famous dish at home, here’s the recipe, courtesy of Martin and Food Network Canada!

Anitra decided to choose a less fatty main and went with the tartare. Normally, it’s bison, but that night, it was venison. It was served with two large pieces of toasted baguette and a salad with a creamy dressing.

As for me, I went with my “usual” (this was my third visit, and I confess I’ve had the same thing each time): Canard en Conserve, or put less elegantly in English, “Duck in a Can”. If you’ve ever watched Chef Picard’s TV show Martin sur la Route or its English version, The Wild Chef, you’ll know how fond he is of incorporating canning into his cooking.

Here’s the dish once it’s plated:

And here’s the plating process, as shot with my iPhone:

(Yes, I know I shot a vertical movie. I was just so excited that I forgot to properly orient my phone.)

Here’s the can, which guests can keep:

The ingredients are listed on the back, just above a cartoon rendition of Chef Picard:

In case you don’t read French, here’s the list of ingredients:

• Half a magret (the breast meat of a duck raised specifically for foie gras)
• 100 grams of foie gras
• 80 ml veal glaze with balsamic vinegar
• 180 ml embeurrée de chou (cabbage braised in butter, lardons, chicken stock, garlic, and onions)
• Half a head of roasted garlic
• 2 branched of thyme

The dish was so foie gras-laden that I felt compelled to order a glass of sauternes, the perfect complement to fatty duck liver. Unfortunately, they sell it only by the bottle, but my waiter selected something that was a very good substitute. Unfortunately, I can’t remember what it was, other than it being some variety of sweet white wine starting with the letter “J”. Anyone out there care to enlighten me?

I have been enlightened — the wine is Jurançon doux! My thanks to The New York City Math Teacher.

After finishing my canard en conserve, I provided my date with some assistance finishing her tartare:

Quite stuffed but wanting something sweet with which to end the meal, we went for the simplest dessert. It was an evening special: a banana run milkshake, which was probably the lightest option:

Our appetites sated and our bodies fueled by duck fat, we decided to walk the nearly two and a half miles from Au Pied de Cochon back to the AirBnB apartment at Guy and Maisonneuve and take in a late summer Saturday night in Montreal.

All in all, a lovely evening!

The Hand Eye Society describes itself as a “not-for-profit coalition of people and projects in support of Toronto’s videogame communities”. Their goals are:

1. To help people make games
2. To connect game makers with each other and with an audience, offline
3. To foster diversity in game creation and public perception of games

…and hey, it just could be that videogames could make the world a better place.

With that in mind, you might be interested that the Hand Eye Society is holding an Education Working Group Meeting tonight (Wednesday, September 5th) at 7:30 p.m. at Education Through Media (1610 Bloor Street West, between Keele and Dundas). They say:

If you have any experience teaching people (informally or not) about games we’d love you to come and share your perspective.

If you have an interest in games and education but no experience, but may be able to volunteer some time to these work on these initiatives, you’re also welcome. (Ten hours of volunteer time makes you a full Hand Eye Society member and eligible to vote in the next AGM.)

I have more than my fair share of teaching videogame programming to adults and kids, and I’ve been meaning to do a few more good deeds, so I plan to be there. If you’d like to attend as well, please RSVP to Jim Munroe at jim@handeyesociety.com.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

The Back Story

When Heather Payne wanted to learn how to make websites and web applications, she didn’t know where to turn. She didn’t know any developers to help her get started or even point the way, and the “boy’s club” image of the programming world can be quite off-putting to women. Fortunately, she found a PyLadies Python programming workshop while visiting Los Angeles in 2011, and the experience inspired her to create a similar environment back home in Toronto. With a single tweet, her idea grew into what we now know as Ladies Learning Code.

Ladies Learning Code now has a permanent atelier at the Annex branch of the Centre for Social Innovation large enough to hold workshops for dozens of eager learners who want to get a better idea of how the technology they use every day works, how to program it, and how to be creative with it. This sort of thing costs money, so they’re holding a fundraiser in the space next Wednesday, September 19th at 7:00 p.m..

The Details

• When: Wednesday, September 19th at 7:00 p.m.
• Where: Centre for Social Innovation’s Annex Branch at 720 Bathurst Street
• Admission: $25 — purchase your ticket online here (choose the $25 “Party Time” perk or the $50 “Party Time Dlus Donation” perk)
• What’ll be there:
  • Bottle Service for the high-rollers: $125 gets you a bottle and your own private area
  • A free drink with your ticket
  • Inexpensive drinks – they’re $3 each, including the Caesars sponsored by Mott’s Clamato
  • DJs and a dance floor
  • Old-school videogames: a Nintendo NES and a rare Vectrex (a hard-to-find vector graphics console)
  • 3D printers and 3D-printed goods for sale
  • iPad caricatures
  • …and more!

It’s a good party for a good cause, and hey — I’ll be there. What more incentive do you need?

The article also appears in Global Nerdy.

And now, some more photos of me and Quebecois accordionist extraordinaire Bob Fournier, jamming on our accordions on Quebec City’s rue du Petit Champlain last Thursday. My thanks to Bob for letting me jam with him and to Anitra for capturing the whole thing on her camera!

(In case you’re wondering what this is all about, the previous blog entry will explain everything.)

The passing of Labour Day means back to school for the kids, and back to work for me; my new job as CTO of Comprehensive Technology Services starts today.

Before the serious work of diving back into producing software, I decided to take my first proper vacation with the lovely lady pictured above. She came up to Toronto  to catch the Fan Expo sci-fi/horror/gaming/all-round-geek conference…

…after which we spent a week in Montreal with a side trip to Quebec City.

While in Quebec City, we stayed at Chateau Frontenac…

…and had dinner at Le Lapin Sauté (“The Jumping Rabbit”), a restaurant located right on Le Petit Champlain that specializes in rabbit dishes:

Le Lapin Sauté is right beside a courtyard where buskers play. When we started dinner, a guitarist was providing the music:

…but partway through our meal, he left and accordionist Bob Fournier took over:

He played a combination of classical accordion numbers as well as some less-expected ones including Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire, all very well.

After dinner, I had to approach him and ask if he’d play a couple of numbers with me. He looked so delighted when he realized that I had an accordion with me, and so the jam session began:

He then sat me down and took me through a quick lesson on how to play La Vie en Rose:

He then asked me what sort of music I usually played, to which I replied “Le rock et le pop!”. Then I played a medley of Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time and Mitsou’s Bye Bye Mon Cowboy (a Quebec pop hit from the eighties):

We had a grand old time. I’ll post more photos from the jam session a little later today.

(And for old time’s sake, here’s the video for Bye Bye Mon Cowboy…)