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Tinga de Pato Serves 4 as Main Dish. Tinga Poblana is a traditional Mexican stew flavored with chipotles and made with a base of tomatoes. The dish is usually made with pork, but I find the rich meat of duck a perfect compliment to the smokey, sweet sauce. Since pork was introduced by the Spanish, interestingly, duck actually has deeper roots in Mexican cooking than pig. You can serve this stew simply with tortillas or rice, but it also makes an excellent topping for tostadas, huaraches, and sopes. Or, do like I do and never give it a chance to be eaten with a starch because you've already used a spoon, a ladel, and finally the scraping of your index finger to eat up every last drop. 7 lb Whole Duck 1 lb Tomatoes (2-3 medium, Diced) 1/2 lb White Onion (1/2 large, Diced) 4 Garlic Cloves (Minced) 1/3 lb Mexican Pork Chorizo 2 Chipotles (Rehydrated or Adobado, Minced) Duck or Chicken Stock (optional) Salt Remove the giblets and set the liver aside. Remove the leg-thigh quarters and the wing drumettes and set aside also. These pieces are all you need for this recipe. The breast, however, can be seared and served atop the tinga for an elegant touch. YOu can also use the skin of the duck to make chicharrones de pato (duck pork rinds) and serve these crispy bits with the tinga, also, for texture. (If you're going to make chicharrones, remove the skin from the duck leg-thigh pieces.) Otherwise, save the carcass for duck stock. Brown the duck leg-thigh pieces and drumettes on both sides over medium-high heat in rendered duck fat, lard, or bacon grease. Remove and set aside. Lower the heat to medium and add the onion and a pinch or two of salt. Sweat the onions and as liquid is released from them, use it to scrape up the brown bits from the bottom of the pan left by the duck. When the onions begin to become translucent, add the garlic. Stir and sautee only briefly and add the chorizo. Once the chorizo is browned, add the tomatoes and a pinch or two more salt to help them release their liquids. Cook until most of the liquid has evaporated and the tomatoes have mostly broken down. Add the chipotles and mix. Either type of chipotle works well. I prefer to use one of each because you get more depth from the rehydrated chipotles, but the adobo adds a nice sweet and tangy note to the sauce. You can also substitute one to two teaspoons of Bufalo chipotle sauce for each chipotle. Mix and add back in the duck pieces, including the liver. (You can also mince the liver and add it during the previous steps.) The liver adds a nice depth to the sauce and more complexity, but it is optional. Add enough duck stock (or other liquid) to cover halfway up the side of the meat. Increase the burner to medium-high. Bring to a light boil, cover, and reduce heat to low, maintainin a simmer. Simmer the meat for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, flipping at the halfway point. Remove the duck and set aside to cool. Shred when it has cooled down enough. (If you can keep from gnawing on the bones and eating half the meat, you have more will power than me.) Reduce the sauce to a consistency and intensity that you enjoy, salting if needed. You can also puree the sauce and then reduce if necessary. I like to take a little more than half of the sauce and lightly puree it, leaving a little texture and then adding that back into the pan with the un-processed portion of sauce. It thickens it nicely and blends the flavors while maintaing a rustic texture. Add the shredded meat back to the pan and warm through. Serve with your favorite starch, and with avocados or guacamole, crema or sour cream, or cheese. Keywords: Mexican, Dinner, Main Dish, Intermediate, Duck, Hot and Spicy, eGCI ( RG1038 )

I couldn't find any Indian food threads for Portland, so I hope this isn't redundant.... Several of us Chowhounders and eGulleters unified on PortlandFood.org have been meeting for lunch as a curry club the last few weeks. So far we've hit India House, Swagat NW, and, today, Curry Leaf. India House and Swagat are both mediocre. I like a couple items on the buffet at Swagat and the intensity and flavors of the sauces, although they sometimes have items that are actually bad. India House may be more even overall, but I find it uniformly mediocre and often bland and unbalanced. (We started with these primarily to get the long-time Portland standards out of the way and thus establish a litmus test.) Curry Leaf, however, was very good. Everything on the buffet was good to very good. The flavors were fresh and intense but balanced. I really liked the malabar chilli chicken and the cabbage-mustard seed dishes. The former was savory, only moderately spicy, with tender chicken and nice cinnamon and other spice fragrances. The latter was buttery and tangy. But the other dishes -- that soup, that tomatoey lentil curry, the tandoori chicken -- were all good, too, just not my preference in comparison to the others. They alternate their Sunday buffet between Southern and Northern Indian food (all veggie on Southern Sundays). Here's their website: http://www.curryleafpdx.com/home/index.asp btw, a good list of Indian restaurants in Portland can be found here (thanks to Leopoldo at http://www.geekroar.com for the list): http://www.indogram.com/index.php?centerpi...ortland%2C%20OR

Yeah, I just use the Armour brand manteca. I do reuse the lard, though, and it gets more flavorful with each use. You have to be careful, though, if you're flavoring it because those "impurities" can burn at higher temps, so I keep that stuff separeetly in the refrigerator. The crisper (or rotter, as bill Cosby called it) is full of fats in tupperware in my frig. If only I labeled them....I haven't found a place close to me that sells their lard. They all reuse it for their own chicharron and carnitas. I should ask sometime and see if they'd do so. You do see the two styles in cookbooks, as I noted. In Kennedy's Essentials, which might be the only book of hers with a carnitas recipe (I don't own any of her Spanish language books, so I can't be sure), she notes that the traditional method is frying in lard, but that a home method is to use water/liquid, like Jaymes does in her recipe, and then fry. One of my favorite taquerias does carnitas this way. They're really good and I think the key is to adequately season the liquid. I haven't done a head to head test, I think Scott -- DFW is planning on it, but I would think you're giving up succulence for ease in the water method. However, you should be able to impart salinity and miscellaneous flavors (such as using the tequila, citrus, etc) in a way you can't with the lard method. It's kind of like braised duck vs duck confit, in my mind. It's not so much a question of which is better, but what you want to emphasize. In carnitas, I've found that ultimately I prefer the traditional Michoacan carnitas that are ultra succulent fried only in lard. I like how the richness of the meat contrasts with a spicy salsa on a taco. With braised carnitas, I think you would probably want to avoid a salsa so that it doesn't mask the flavor you've imparted to the meat, assuming you're adding a flavor like most here have done. If you were doing water alone, I would think you'd be mostly doing it for ease, though, and not because it yields the best results (although, some people prefer poached/steamed duck to confit). But again, I haven't done a head to head comparison. I was just trying to solidify a recipe I've been using for a year or so now. Bayless's Authentic Mexican and Nancy Zaslavsky's A Cook's Tour of Mexico both provide lard methods. Marge Poore's book says almost the exact same thing as Kennedy. Talking with Theabroma, she mentioned that she learned both little water lot of fat and lot of fat little water methods (the water in the fat can keep the temp of the oil from going too high too quickly). There really aren't that many recipes, surprisingly, for carnitas in Mexican cookbooks, though, at least in the English langauge. I don't think any of Martinez's books have one, neither Ortiz's. I know Theabroma has an extensive collection of Spanish language Mexican cookbooks. I'd be interested to know what the standard is there, not that it truly matters. I was just remembering a trip to Guadalajara I made. I always talk to cabbies about where they like to eat, trying to find places that make good Mexican home cooking. (The most disappointing answer ever was in Puerto Vallarta where a cabbie told me that Outback Steakhouse was the best restaurant in town -- and he really meant it.) Anyway, I was talking to this cabbie who was a real food lover and very proud of the local food. I was complaining that there wasn't the variety of Mexico City and he started going off. One of the things he was most animated about was the carnitas. He was insisiting because they were closer to Michoacan that they knew what they were doing. Indeed, the stands proclaiming Michoacan carnitas were very prominent and I have to say that the carnitas were awesome. They were always the succulent pieces of pork boiled in lard. So I think that cabbie, even though my Spanish is mediocre at best, convinced me and I've tried to emulate those ever since. Plus, there are a good percentage of Mexicans from Michoacan and Jalisco around here and generally the places that do them best do them in big vats of lard. Taste is so much what you are already familiar with or have learned to identify as good. My advice: try both methods and see which one you like. You may like one for some purposes and another for other purposes.

That's tough, Sheila. You might have better luck on the California board seeing if anyone has eaten it. There are so many combinations possible. It's very likely to be similar to the salsa verde cruda in the class, possibly fried afterwards as well. Try making that and see how it compares. I'd be interested to hear your results. Just fry half of the batch. Good luck!

Been doing some carnitas experiments lately after some offline discussions with Scott -- DFW. I prefer the Michoacan style carnitas that seem to always be cooked in their own fat, essentially pork confit that's caramelly on the outside. I wanted to solidify the proces a little so that Scott -- DFW could compare to the water method advocated by Jaymes and given similarly in Kennedy's Essential Cuisines. (Bayless and Zavlaskey recommend a similar method to mine.) Hopefully others will try it, improve it, and report back. Cut pork shoulder or country style pork ribs into approximately two inch square chunks. Put meat along with the zest of one orange and the juice of a half an orange in an oven proof dish. Heat enough lard to cover meat by at least a 1/2 inch to 190 degrees and pour onto the meat in the over proof dish. Note the orange zest, the level of the fat, and the probe thermometer. Put into a 200 degree oven for two hours or until the meat is tender. Alternatively, you could do this on the stove top, but it is much more difficult in small batches to maintain a low temperature. You can see the small bubbles rising throughout the oil, but not frothing. You do not want the oil to reach a boiling temperature. A probe thermometer helps here, but the orange juice in the oil also helps. Since it boils at 212, if the oil goes above 212 the orange juice will rapidly boil out of the oil and start to pop. At a simmer, the orange juice will only create light intermittent bubbles. This is what the pieces look like when they're finished in the oven. Heat more lard to a depth of at least half the thickness of the pork pieces. Don't use the lard from the oven if you put something that burns in it (like orange juice). Get the oil relatively hot, at least 350, and place the pieces in the pan. Carnitas caramelizing on the stovetop. A closeup. The caramelized carnitas. Brown the pieces of pork to your liking, remove, and squeeze the other half of the orange over the carnitas and sprinkle with salt. The finished carnitas split open to expose the succulent flesh inside. I'm hoping Scott -- DFW will post his results here as well. I'd like to see a head to head comparison and hear his feelings on the benefits and problems with each style and the flavor/texture differences. btw, the best carnitas I've ever had are at Salvador's in Woodburn, OR. See pictures here: http://www.extramsg.com/modules.php?set_al...=view_photo.php Here are some from La Esperanza in Sacramento, CA: http://www.extramsg.com/modules.php?set_al...=view_photo.php And from Carniceria Lopez, also in Sacramento: http://www.extramsg.com/modules.php?set_al...=view_photo.php

http://www.nutritiondata.com has the data by species and farm vs wild: http://www.nutritiondata.com/foods-salmon0...0000000000.html

By the end of the season last year, I was paying less than $10/lb consistently. $25/lb probably isn't ridiculous when you consider how much demand there will be early on and the fact that you'll probably be getting ultra fresh stuff that hasn't sat around at all. What's amazing is that people in NY will probably be paying $30+ for 6 ozs of stuff that's been sitting on a block of ice for days and days at a restaurant.

I wouldn't worry during the day, but during the evening....

Had a coupon in my entertainment book for Thai Place. Hadn't been there in over a year. They used to be the only place in my neighborhood of Vancouver, Cascade Park, but now there are three others, including Arawan outpost, which is probably the best of the lot, both in the quality of the food and the quality of the atmosphere. All three of these new restaurants replaced Thai Place, which made its pad thai with ketchup instead of tamarind and had a very narrow menu. The people there were supremely nice and the food cheap. So we decided to use our coupon for a cheap meal. Well, to put it simply, they've greatly improved. First of all, the items are much more authentic, eg, using tamarind, not ketchup, for the pad thai. But they're also prepared much better overall. The flavors are fresher and better. The menu is also greatly improved. eg, they've added larb, yum nuer, tod mun pla, manora, nam sod, chao phraya, and several items I'm not familiar with like khao yai and gaang jeut. We got the pad thai with tofu, the tod mun pla, and the nam sod. All were good. The pad thai could have used a little more fish sauce and some lime, I think, but was decent. The tod mun pla (curried fish cakes) was tasty and nicely fried with a slightly spicy sweet and sour sauce. A little too green oniony for me, but I liked them. The nam sod (similar to larb, but with ginger and no toasted rice) was the best of the three. It was a little too gingery for me, but quite tasty. Now I want to go back and see if they've improved their curries and try some of the other miscellaneous less common dishes.

I'd be interested in hearing more details, Raynickben. You say whether you like it, but not so much why or what. btw, NewYorkTexan, it probably was Maytag. imo, Maytag is mediocre blue cheese at best. In the world of blues, it's probably kind of bad, but even by domestic blue standards, comparing it to California's Point Reyes or Oregon's Crater Lake Blue, it's also pretty mediocre. I think it comes off tinny or chemically in the aftertaste without much of an interesting flavor.

True. But think about it this way. Say a very authentic Thai restaurant opens up in Portland. They use impeccable ingredients, the prices are fair, and the dishes are as good as anything you've tasted in Thailand. A dream Thai restaurant. It gets critical acclaim. They're in a busy neighborhood. They have typical food costs and low labor costs. Etc, etc. But people just don't come in. You can still say it's the restaurant's fault for not kow-towing to local tastes, but I would tend to intepret the problem within the community as unwilling to eat such food. Obviously we don't know, I don't think, how Chef Henry ran his restaurant. But I know that despite it being very high quality food with prices no higher than any other nice restaurant in Portland, it never seemed to be that busy. I like Portland. But I do think we have a restaurant-going character flaw in that as a community we are generally unwilling to pay for top quality food. Why do we have no **** restaurants? People are willing to pay $300k for a studio in the Pearl, but not $75 for a 5 course fixed price menu. I'll go further. I think it's lame that when people rate places like Higgins they base it on the quality of their burger. I could go on, but I'll stop ranting now.

I don't have anything against it either. I just don't want it taking over the entire landscape of food options in Portland. You would think that a coffee shop on every corner and a brewpub within walking distance of every frickin residence in the metro area would be enough. On Chowhound someone said that the windows were boarded up and there was a lien notice on the doors at William's/Buckman. Also, how many people close a successful business abruptly because they want to travel through France, or whatever the explanation was? You might at least try selling it before it closed or having someone run it for you. Plus, I never saw William's with many people.

From the WW: http://www.wweek.com/story.php?story=5081 Maybe it's just because I don't drink, but is anyone else sick of brewpubs in Portland? I'm sick of brewpubs and I'm sick of coffee shops. We have way too many of both. Wanna know why Portlanders are fat? Brewpubs. Fried food and alcohol. Meanwhile, we can't keep places like William's/Buckman or Laslow's open. Or, again, Cafe Azul. We should have a pool: what will be the next kick ass restaurant to go under because it didn't serve fried foods and beer?

It depends on the cut for myself. If it's lean and will stiffen, like flank steak, as it cooks, I want it rare to medium rare. If it's fattier and will moisten as the fat melts, like a ribeye, I want it cooked closer to medium. But people, oh, they're a problem....My dad freaks if there is any pinkness inside whatsoever. I just don't make him steak anymore. It's a waste. Buy a brisket and slow roast it for those types. Or just feed them chicken. If you want to please the greatest number without making each steak to order, go with medium. I'd highly recommend purchasing a probe thermometer or two and experimenting. You can watch the steak as it's cooking, set the alarm, and even watch it change temperatures as it rests. Then you can see where you like it. Start with medium rare (145) and see if you like it more or less than that. There's a big difference between rare and raw, but both have their place.

What about "edible bulb" or just "bulb". Thanks for all the help. I should go out and purchase another banana blossom and give it a try. Do you shake out the -- what are they? -- stamens, too?

Thanks reesek. Again, KK is one of those places that in many ways doesn't need a good location, you would think, and yet they seem to put so much effort in to securing specific locations.

Aren't places like that Indian restaurant the exception, not the rule, though? If location is so unimportant, why do huge companies like McDonald's and Olive Garden spend so much money scouting locations and purchasing property. For good or ill, an Olive Garden or Cheesecake Factory is more of a draw in a town than most **** or ***** restaurants. They have instant name recognition, too. You'd think they would need a good location less than anyone else. Yet you hear about how systematically and scientifically these corporate powerhouses scout locations. If location is so unimportant, why do so many high end restauranteurs open outlets in Vegas? Why did so many top restaurants congregate, probably paying astronomical leases, in the Time-Warner Center? Why do so many cities have restaurant rows? Why does every office building have a coffee cart outside and often a sandwich shop/cart inside? Why are there so often locations that can't keep a restaurant for more than a couple months? Why do so many bars sell fried and fatty foods? Why are the number of Starbucks in an area directly proportional to the number of SUVs? Why is Popeye's only found in black neighborhoods in the North? If nothing else, just play the game. Assume that location is imporant (or don't, actually) and tell me what types of locations go with what types of restaurants. eg, I was looking at a spot this weekend. It's a nice little building, the only commercial area in the middle of a beautiful upper-middle class neighborhood. There's a coffee and dessert place and a video store in the building already. There's an open spot with a very reasonable lease, so I went to look at it. Would a breakfast/lunch place work here? I question it. Maybe breakfast, especially on weekends, but who would be home or in this area during lunch? It's not about fads and trends. It's about solid business practices.

I supposed the fried marrow I had at a Masa's, then, was a two-fer.

Okay you Washington County taco munchers: help. I ate some great stuff at Cinco de Mayo and a lot of the best were by places that have trucks in Beaverton/Hillsboro. Here are the places I'm looking for: * El Tianguis de Morelia * Richi's * Mister Tacos * Mexico Lindo * Ay Caramba You can see my website for pics of these places. They have their signs on their booths. If you find one, I'll buy you a couple tacos there for lunch some time.

I'm sure we've already mentioned that William's/Buckman are out of business. Laslow's, as of today, also. So apparently that rumor was true. It's many months later, though, and I'm still sick about Cafe Azul going out of business. I was talking to a lady at the Cinco de Mayo fiesta (which was awesome...went twice) whose son in law used to cook there. They loved it as much as me and they've travelled way more in Mexico than I have and she grew up in Veracruz. She agreed that it's the only Oaxacan food she's had in the US that is as good or better than what you get in Mexico. We even craved many of the same dishes: the manchamanteles, the quesadillas with the crispy cheese flowing out, the tequila ice cream. Dios mio! La pena!

DRColby, do you have a link for that article? Wouldn't them being stripped of their roe and thrown back in the water be similar to what would happen in the wild, where, after they mate they die? Or is the bigger problem where this commercial process occurs. ie, in the wild, the fish make it to the end of thousands of streams and then mate, distributing this process to some degree.

I was just talking to a lady during the Cinco de Mayo celebration here whose son used to cook for Cafe Azul (owner trained with Diana Kennedy) and who travels *a lot* in Mexico and she recommended a place she says is on the main plaza that's on the second floor and called something like La Casa de la Abuela or something like that. Yep, probably got it right: http://www.laregion.com.mx/oaxaca/guia/gourmets/rest_h.php Some links: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...19493&hl=oaxaca http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showto...23047&hl=oaxaca http://www.fronterakitchens.com/home_away/travel/oaxaca.html

clayton, I have a feeling that theory may suffer from all the good restaurants that went under before you had a chance to hear about them. Certainly there is more to the success of a restaurant than location, but that's not the question. What locations go with what?

markovitch, food/taste is subjective enough, though, that if you did blind tastings, I don't know that it would make the result much more fair. Allowing the chefs to give context, like having an artist explain their work, can easily be seen as a good thing. Didn't the Morimoto and Sakai have interpreters?

The Oakland Fruitvale area rocks. I would add El Ojo de Agua and La Gran Chiquita to merle's list. Mission's not bad either. San Jose has some great Mexican eats, too. None of these will break the bank. South of SF on the coast, Santa Cruz, Monterey and the Monterey Bay have lots to offer in the beauty department and towns such as Watsonville are almost entirely Mexican. I'm not a fan of Mr. Taco, but there is a whole area of Sacramento that has excellent options that are near the interstate. (Also, Dona Tomas in Oakland isn't too expensive and has good upscale Mexican.) I commented on a few threads down below, but you can also just go to my blog and check out the full report: http://www.extramsg.com/modules.php?name=N...order=0&thold=0 And you can see the pics here: http://www.extramsg.com/modules.php?set_al...=view_album.php