International Day of Climate Action in Moncton

Yesterday was the International Day of Climate Action. According to http://www.350.org/, the organisation behind what can only be described as a phenomenon, there were over 5200 demonstrations planned in over 150 countries! Wow! Really. That's quite a mobilisation of people who are demanding, peacefully, for delegates to the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December to take action so that we reduce CO2 part per million below 350. We are presently at about 390 parts per million.

In New Brunswick, most people live on the coast. With the advent of rising sea levels and more vicious weather, it is crucial that this province does something to do their part. I don't know if we can rely on our federal government; not only are they generally incompetent but they are, I believe, too detached from individuals. What we need is action on the municipal and provincial levels. If every municipality in Canada does it's part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it really doesn't matter what the federal government does beyond slapping the wrists of the big industrial polluters. For now, however, we're being led by a shark of a politician whose the BFF of Canada's big oil companies. Stephen Harper's an idiot politician who couldn't care less about the lives of Canadian citizens. He represents the corporate pockets of Canada. Hopefully his time will be over soon.

On a different front, I think it's terribly important that people participate in any social efforts for environmental initiatives or other. It's like voting; you might not be able to see the immediate impact of your vote (ex: your candidate loses) but the actual act of being an active citizen and of encouraging others to be active as well means that there is a body of people demanding change towards a better world. Look at yesterday's activities for example. We were maybe 30 in Moncton which may seem meanial and irrelevant. But if there were only 30 people in each of the 5200 demonstrations which happened all over the world that's a minimum of 156 000 people. And ours was not nearly the largest gathering. If world leaders ignore these pleas the only result is that there will be disgruntled citizens and from there you're only asking for the radicals to gain a foothold. Plus, it's just idiotic to ignore the implications of climate change. Freak weather patterns. Millions of environmental refugees. Destruction of biodiversity. Desertification. Mass coastal flooding. These are only a few and are already all underway.

So action needs to be taken on climate change. Only by being active citizens can we ever hope that anything will ever be done to save this planet.

P.S. Thanks to everyone who came out yesterday! It was great!

Culinary Paradise at L'Idylle

At the farmer's market every Saturday I cross Emmanuel Charretier, the owner and chef at L'Idylle. We visit the same merchants. We buy many of the same products. However, after going through the culinary experience that Emmanuel and his kind wife provided us with, I will no longer be able to look at the market in the same light.

My girlfriend and I decided that we would treat ourselves and go for the full Idylle experience; the dégustation menu with wine pairing. Now it's true that unless you've got heavy pockets, this is only something you can permit yourself on a yearly basis. But is it ever worth it!

The meal started off with a mise en bouche which consisted of a soft mousse of red pepper with a delicious little bit of lobster on top. This was paired with a light rosé which, we were told, would remind you of southern France.

The second course, was a marinated sole filet, crunchy on one side and slightly raw on the other. Along with this were pearls of raspberry vinegar, carrot oil, and a lemon gelé. The textures were perfect and the tastes were subtle but exquisite. A white wine complimented the dish beautifully.

What came next was truly a fall dish. Once again paired with a white wine, we were served pan cooked oysters from Shippagan with hazelnut oil and Jerusalem artichoke cream. The oysters were perfectly cooked and the little layer of nutty hazelnut oil which surrounded them was excellent with the rich but not too rich Jerusalem artichoke cream.

Next came one of my favourite dishes of the meal. Homemade ravioli stuffed with buffalo marrow and foie gras sitting on top of wild chanterelles mushrooms. The stuffing was absolutely exquisite. And it goes without saying that the chanterelles were the pure embodiement of autumn. For some reason, I can't remember the wine for this particular dish.

The next dish was truly beautiful for me because of its Pino Noir pairing. The wine smelled lightly of butterscotch but was a clean drinking. The aroma complimented beautifully the sesame crusted scallop which sat on top of a green tomato marmalade which bathed in some sort of sweet sauce underneath a green foam. This really struck it home that wine and food were meant for one another. I'd never experienced that before.

Main courses finished with a rich dish of veal sweetbread on risotto along with a drizzling of an orange reduction. Sangre de Toro, a full bodied red, was the accompanying wine. Now I love offal. My girlfriend, not so much. Especially after I'd asked our waitress where the sweetbread was sittuated. She also gave us the medical name: thyroid gland. This didn't turn me off. It was a wonderfully rich dish. And I also got to finish my girlfriend's sweetbread. Bonus.

After main courses came the end of the wine but the arrival of coffee. The trend I seem to be noticing is that more and more places offer you an allongé instead of percolated coffee nowadays. The coffee came along with the cheese dish. This was a simple chèvre brie from Au Fond des Bois on top of homemade apple compote served with a nut bread crouton. Simple and delicious.

After the cheese course came the fruit course. I don't know what I was expecting but it surely wasn't as ornate as what we were presented with. At one end of the square plate was a ground cherry followed by a homemade vanilla icecream dollop in the middle of the plate and concluding with a small cripy tower sitting on top of more ground cherries and stuffed with a light maple cream. Under all of this was an orange flavoured syrup and a crispy wafer sat on top. Gorgeous.

The last item before the end was the chocolate course. At the bottom of the plate was my favourite thing; chocolate sauce flavoured with szechuan pepper. This, for me, almost managed to outshine the mini eclair and the chocolate ring which was filled with yet another bit of cream.

The meal ended with a mignardise. We weren't told what this was since it was apparently a surprise. What it ended up being was candied rhubarb under a rhubard mousse. This was a great pallate cleanser. Unfortunately, it signalled the end of what was undoubtabley the greatest meal I've ever had.

Emmanuel then came out to chat with us. It's absolutely fantastic to be able to appreciate him in his element. We chatted informally but I was in awe of this man's talent and of his wife's wine pairings. They take everyday items that everyone has access to and transform them into something celebratory.

If you're in the Moncton area, it would be a sin not to save your pennies and visit L'Idylle. It's an experience you're never likely to forget.

http://www.restaurantidylle.com/

Moncton's Asian Garden Indian Restaurant

We went out on Friday night for dinner and a movie. Since our discovery of Zen Garden here in Moncton as well as Saigon Thai and other asian restaurants, we've fallen in love with all things truly asian. Though for some reason I don't automatically assume Indian food when I think of the words asian garden (undoubtably due to some ignorant Western and back-of-the-woods part of me) I can't say that I was dissapointed. We had a fantastic meal at this small restaurant.

We were greated and seated by a very enthousiastic and very outgoing little girl. I convinced her to fetch the waitress when she tried to convince me that she could take my order without writting it down. I'm in the restaurant industry. Can't pull the wool over my eyes.

I had a Kingfisher beer from India (nothing special here) and my girlfriend had a really delicious smoothie like mango drink. We opted for a very generous 3 course meal option which gave you an appetizer, two veg entrees, one non-veg entree, some naan bread, basmati rice, a desert, and an option of chai tea or coffee.

We started with some veggie pakoras which were good. They were what you would expect from pakoras but still very good. The highlight of our meal came at the entree.

Now I love having a variety of things on the table and you can pick a little bit of this and a little bit of that. The Asian Garden definitely delivers on this point. We had fresh hot naan bread (which is equally delicious if not better than fresh tortillas), fluffy basmati rice, a mildly spicy lamb dish, a flavourfull chickpea dish and a sweet pea dish with chunks of cheese (or tofu?). I didn't write the names of the dishes down but I can tell you that they were all very very delicious. They exploded with flavour and made me and my girlfriend exclaim the number one compliment we can make to a restaurant. That is, "I wish we could make this at home!"

Finally, we were served home made saffron scented ice cream with chai tea. My ice cream was mango flavoured and my girlfriend's was pistachio. They were both equally good. And though the chai tea wasn't a total knock out, it was a very nice finish to a very pleasant and tasty meal.

I definitely recommend paying a visit to the Asian Garden on Killam Drive in Moncton.

Bubble Tea at Zen Garden

We've recently discovered Zen Garden, definitely one of the best Asian food restaurants in Moncton. Though the building is really not much to look at, the food is excellent. In our small Canadian towns, it's rare that you'll find real Asian food unless you know the local Chinese family who owns the Chinese restaurant and place a special request to sample something authentic. The alternative is Chinese-Canadian food which I would really say is just Canadian food with soy and oyster sauce.

Now in medium sized towns like Moncton, you've got more chances of finding the real stuff. You've got Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, Korean, Chinese, etc. I don't know exactly which Chinese cuisine we're talking about here at Zen Garden but that's sort of secondary to the topic at hand. All you need to know is that it's good. Really good.

This little exotic gem also has a wide selection of teas. You can buy them dried for home use or you can take tea with your meal. Actually, you should take tea with your meal. I mean, I hate when people go to a restaurant with a particular cuisine and order a Coke. You're ruining the whole experience. Rants aside, we tasted the Zen Garden's Bubble Tea. Turns out this is a fairly popular Asian sweet milky tea but it was new to us. So being the foodie that I am, I thought I'd be a bright little boy and make the Bubble Tea myself.

Find any recipe online and one thing is clear: tapioca is a bitch to cook. We find the little dry balls at our local Asian product market and followed the online recipe. Boil for half an hour andd let sit covered another half hour. ONE HOUR!!! For little gelatinous balls! This is the kind of thing that it's worth waiting to buy it at the restaurant. But regardless we did make it. It was more of an event than a recipe.

For the combination of the drink (which I think I read somewhere is famously presented by Tom Cruise's flairy bartendermanship in Cocktail) you simply incorporate 1 cup of black tea (we used Satsuma black tea) with 1 cup of soy or regular milk. Pour in a tonne of simple syrup (water, brown and white sugar) till it's almost too sweet and then drop the tapioca balls in the bottom. Best to drink with a wide straw and a moderate portion of tapioca. Those little gelatine balls can get to be much pretty quickly.

We served the Bubble Tea with California rolls bought from two Korean women at the farmer's market, quality soy sauce (not the salt-only HP kind) and a dollop of wasabi. It was good but I think we'll leave the Bubble Tea making to the experts.

Barnyard Barbecue Rules

I'm choosy when it comes to restaurants. If I can make it better at home or don't find the price matches the decor more than the quality of the food, I'm out. But the Barnyard Barbecue on Mill Street in Moncton is a guaranteed winner.

As the name would suggest, their specialty is barbecue. I mean I had roasted and smoked chicken with beans the other day and they even manage to make that taste delicious. The flesh was smoky, the skin with crispy, the bbq sauce they slathered on top of the chicken was delicious and even the beans were tasty.

You see that's what's great about restaurants that aren't chains. They have to make everything themselves or are doomed to mediocrity. I had a burger at the Barnyard once that goes by the name of "the Burger that Ate Moncton". It was a huge beef patty, topped with shredded pork with all sort of other goodies inside, topped with fresh bread (a must!) and bacon with fries or whatever side you wish for. It's "oh my god" good. That's what it is.

Plus the great thing about the Barnyard is that it's located at the front of the Pump House Brewery. You've got all of the containers and equipment behind floor to ceiling windows that attest to the fact that the beer you're drinking couldn't be any fresher. So while you sit in the southern/hick/shed-like decor, you can watch honest men and women toil away at making the areas best beer.

My only gripe with the Barnyard is service. It could take awhile to get your food amongst other things. Like the other day when we went, we were sitting back in front of empty plates and the waitress looked at us but didn't take the plates. I mean I know it isn't your table but please think about overall customer service here. Come on!

Anyways I do recommend the Barnyard Barbecue. To get an idea of what to expect, check out their menu at http://www.pumphousebrewery.ca/foodmenu.htm. You'll have a great time and even better food and beer. One of the only musts I've found in Moncton so far.