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De vendredi midi à samedi midi, plus de 125 activités scientifiques sont présentées partout au Québec, dont plus d'une trentaine à Montréal.

Police will have to wait for autopsy results to identify the charred body found early Friday in the trunk of a burning car on Montreal's South Shore.

A Sudanese-Canadian man detained in Sudan will remain in legal limbo for at least another month, despite his desire to come home now, his lawyer said.

When I moved here from the States I brought with me a bunch of Bon Ami cleanser/polishing powder (like Comet but without dyes, perfumes, etc., so much more eco-friendly) but am now running out. So far I haven't been able to find it anywhere, not even Canadian online shops. Here's the info link: Bon Ami I'd prefer to buy within Canada (US mail order duty?)

fig. a: Italians doing it better

There were all kinds of surprises waiting for me when I got home from work the other day.

fig. b: Atwater flowers

First off, no one could accuse Michelle of not bringing me flowers anymore because she'd visited the Atwater Market early that afternoon and picked up these beauts. Okay, they weren't exactly for me, but still...

Her real adventure, though, began not long after her trip to the market. That was when she made arrangements to visit Antonio Pettinicchi all the way out on Sauvé East. That was when she got the real treats.

fig. c: olive tree

Now if you're not familiar with Antonio Pettinicchi (we sure weren't until about a week ago), all you need to know is that on his farm in Molise he produces exceptional olive oil strictly according to traditional methods (hand-picked olives, cold pressed, stone millstones, etc.), all of it is absolutely organic, his only North American outlet is in Montreal, and the quality/price ratio is such that many of the city's finest kitchens have taken note. Every year he comes to town for about a month so that he can do a little wheeling and dealing, and every year he sells out swiftly.

Antonio was there to greet Michelle and he immediately took a shine to her--the fact that she'd arrived by bike didn't hurt. He let her sample both his extra-virgin olive oil and his extra-virgin wild olive oil and Michelle was suitably impressed. Both were outstanding--light, yet intricate--but the extra-virgin wild olive oil was the one that really blew her away--it had a wonderful pepperiness to it the likes of which she'd never encountered before.


fig. d: olive oil bottle composite

Then Michelle got introduced to the rest of the Pettinicchi line, including...



...beautiful, plump green olives...



...lovely canned pomodorini, artisanal cavatelli, heaven-sent balsamic vinegar and vin cotto, and a gorgeous array of confettura, including quince-apple, Barbary fig, and...



...this exotic white watermelon number. In other words: abbondanza!

It didn't take us long to begin enjoying our spoils. We uncorked a bottle of wine and opened up the green olives, and a little later we transformed one jar of pomodorini into a simple, delicious sauce for the cavatelli that highlighted the natural sweetness of the tomatoes. We were going to just wing it, but then we decided to see what Marcella Hazan had to say, and we found this comment introducing her Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter: "This is the simplest of all sauces to make, and none has a purer, more irresistibly sweet tomato taste." She adds that this sauce is "unsurpassed" for potato gnocchi, but that it's also excellent with certain factory-made pastas, such as spaghetti, penne, or rigatoni. We took liberties and had it with the cavatelli.

Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter

1 cup canned imported Italian pomodorini, with their juice
2 1/2 tbsp butter
1/2 medium onion
salt to taste
1/2 - 3/4 lb pasta
freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano cheese

Put the canned tomatoes in a saucepan, add the butter, the onion (don't chop it), and the salt, and cook uncovered at a very slow but steady simmer for 45 minutes, or until the fat floats free from the tomato. Stir from time to time. Taste and correct for salt. Discard the onion before tossing the sauce with the pasta. Serve immediately, sprinkling liberal amounts of parmigiano-reggiano overtop. (You'll find that the cheese marries particularly well with this sauce because it's one of Hazan's specialty butter-based pasta sauce recipes.)

Serves 2.

[based on a recipe from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking]

Marcella was right about that sauce, but then she's never led us wrong. And its butter base allowed us to keep Antonio's olive oil strictly for bread-dipping.

The next morning we trotted out the white watermelon preserve and discovered that it has these incredible caramel notes to it and that it's equally good on toast or on yogurt.

Antonio is only in town for another couple of weeks, he's rapidly running out of product, and he won't be back again until next year, but if you'd like to get in on the action you can contact him and arrange your own personal rendez-vous:

Les Importations Antonio Pettinicchi
1579 Sauvé East
Montreal
Ph: (514) 996-1900
email: info@pettinicchi.com
www.pettinicchi.com

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For the many roles they play, mothers in Canada would earn about $126,593 a year if they were on a company payroll, a study says.

Les groupes et organismes qui s'opposent au projet de modernisation de la rue Notre-Dame maintiennent leur refus, en dépit de l'ajout d'une voie de covoiturage annoncé jeudi par Québec et la Ville de Montréal.

Le gouvernement fédéral bloque la vente à des intérêts américains de l'entreprise MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates de Vancouver qui a mis au point le système Radarsat, le Bras canadien et le robot Dextre.

Just cycled past "Gloria: cuisine fusion latine" at the southeast corner of Bélanger and de Chateaubriand. That used to be a very nondescript snackbar (not the quaint kind). Under renovation.

Owners of older iPods can get a $45 rebate from Apple Inc., now that the company has offered to settle two lawsuits involving the battery life of its portable media players.

Just back from Jamaica, with a serious papaya withdrawal. I though I liked papayas before going to Jamaica, but the fruit I ate there just changed my whole perspective about the specie. I ate as much as I could but sometime the fruit lady couldn't get them for the day (or the market price was too expensive for her), and I can tell you that that day was a bad day. The difference between the papayas I have eaten here and there were the size (unlike the semi-tasteless ginormous ones sold in most stores in MTL, these were small, almost the size of mango), the color (an amazing deep orange), of course the taste (much complex, sweet but an underlying pleasant bitterness, but not "bitter") and smell (again more complex). My research points me to that these are the type "sunrise". Any luck for finding this type in town? They looked more perishable than the snowshoe size ones, so would it be that they are impossible to export? Are they as elusive as the Alfonso mangoes? My other obsession became the ackee fruit, sauteed with the saltfish for breakfast, lunch, dinner, late night snack and everything in between. Can anyone point me to a place to procure these ingredients? Even better, is there a place that serves ackee and saltfish in town? I don't think L Corridor has it in their menu, but I am this close to hitting there for a patty fix and when I go there I will ask for suggestions.

The Canadian economy added a better-than-expected 19,200 new jobs in April, but several analysts said the employment picture isn't quite as rosy as it might appear.

Deux femmes accusent leur père de 92 ans de les avoir agressées sexuellement et maltraitées, il y a de cela un demi-siècle.

Go to Amaranto for Mexican (the one near the Y)http://www.hour.ca/food/food.aspx?iIDArticle=14021… The wife and I go there 3 or 4 times a month and love it, the food is always fresh and tasty (and we only eat out once a week and this is always the place as of late).

I'm just back from "Chez Apo" the Armenian-Lebanese place that makes lahmajdoune and other wonderful savoury baked goods, as well as other treats. Forgot how wonderful the lamajdoune were, just hot out of the old wood-burning oven. Yum. 420 Faillon St 514.271.1076 A review of Chez Apo in the Hour, a local arts and entertainment weekly: http://www.hour.ca/food/food.aspx?iIDArticle=3720 The reviewer is also right abut Pâtisserie Villeray's excellent baklava. They are on Villeray, one block north of Faillon and a bit west of Chez Apo. 363, rue Villeray (just west of St-Denis). Both of these are easily walkable from the Jean-Talon market.

Hey Montreal!

There was a march by young people (CEGEP- and high school-age) just now along Cherrier and up Avenue Parc Lafontaine. I am terrible at guessing numbers but there were easily more than 500 people. I couldn't really read what's on the signs from my window, so I hope someone here knows of the demonstration and can let me know who organized it, and why. Thanks!

I would second Lemeac's mashed potatoes "aligot" that they serve with their grilled veal and morels.

With food prices rising, health experts fear it's just a matter of time before consumers' new food buying habits lead to health problems.

Les employés de La Ronde ont entériné jeudi soir de nouvelles ententes de travail qui les lient à leur employeur jusqu'en 2012.

Montreal's airport authority may cancel a controversial flight paths as soon as June, said CEO James Cherry.