ExtraMSG

It takes me about 10-15 minutes to carefully debone one. It's basically the same as deboning a chicken, which I'm sure you can find lots of descriptions of, but harder because there's less room for error. A good knife really helps. My flexible Global boning knife made a world of difference when I got it. Plan on about 30 minutes for the first couple if you've never done it. I'd really suggest practicing on a chicken first, though, just to see where the trouble spots are.

Consumer Reports liked George Forman, then Ronco, and didn't like Sunbeam. The Forman rotisserie is cheaper than the Ronco according to them, yet they have about the same capabilities. Try ebay (I assume you'll be looking for one of the smaller ones): Search: http://search.ebay.com/ws/search/SaleSearc...submit=+Search+ http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...&category=20675 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...&category=20675 http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewI...&category=20675

Just to emphasize a couple things mentioned with my own experience: salted butter seems to move off the grocery store shelf much quicker than unsalted butter. So my experience is that salted butter is actually fresher, doubly fresher because it has preservatives that keep it fresh. Technically, I think you get more for your money from unsalted butter because weight and volume isn't taken up with salt. But I buy salted butter about 2 to 1 just for convenience and use unsalted only in baking. It's much nicer having salted butter for things like toast and english muffins. Actually, it's one of my pet peeves at restaurants because they so often use good quality, but unsalted butter, for the table, meaning that I need to salt my bread and butter.

Finally got into Park Kitchen and now I'm wondering what took me so long. Park Kitchen North Park Blocks 422 NW 8th 503-223-PARK You enter a narrow bar area, much like Noble Rot, which leads back to a larger dining room with about 8 tables plus some seats facing the kitchen. It's a little less "rustic" than Noble Rot, though, with pea green walls, copper-colored metal tables, chic hanging lights, and dark brown booth seats wrapping around the walls. The menu is divided into four sections: small hot plates, small cold plates, large plates, and desserts. The small plates range in price from $5.50 to $9.50. The large plates were all $18.50 and the desserts were all $6.50 (though a cheese plate was $7.50). I have to say there were many things I was interested in. There were some boring items, but also many interesting items. Ultimately, we settled on two small plates and two large plates (and two desserts). My wife ordered the marinated scallops with blood oranges, fennel, and walnuts ($9.50) for her appetizer. It was very good. The scallops had no off flavor at all and I don't know that they were cooked in any traditional sense, maybe just "cooked" in the same sense that ceviche is. The walnuts were candied and the dish was served with a reduction of some sort, maybe a port reduction, something sweet and fruity with a wine finish. It was a very good dish overall. I ordered an odd one for me: marinated anchovies with preserved lemon and fennel ($6.50). The anchovies were fileted and without any off taste either (just that strong anchovy flavor). The preserved lemon flavor could have been more pronounced, but the fennel slices went wonderfully with the anchovy and helped balance some of the strong flavor without obstructing it. Personally, I would have liked more of the fennel-lemon salad to balance the anchovy, but it was good overall. And I'm not inclined to actually like it. My wife got the sliced duck breast with chestnut puree and caramel oranges ($18.50) for her large plate. The duck was nicely cooked medium-rare with crispy skin (though my wife, shame on her, cut it off and wouldn't let me eat it). The chestnut puree was quite tasty. I thought it was a root vegetable. It also came with spinach and crispy shredded duck. The oranges were disappointing. They weren't thinly sliced and the skin was left on so they were actually rather bitter. Not only that, but a lot of the juice had leeched out of them leaving them just pulpy and bland. My suggestion would be to slice them thinly and slightly candy them in the caramel sauce. They'd be much better. The sauce was decent, though had a little bitterness to it that I didn't enjoy. Still good overall. I got the braised rabbit with preserved apricots and almonds and a side of au gratin greens ($18.50). The rabbit was quite tasty with an excellent sauce. The sauce was maybe a little salty, even for me, but had a lot of flavor. The dried fruit and nuts were great in the dish, of course. It also came with what looked like some grilled tenderloin of rabbit with rosemary, a nice touch, and some nicely roasted potato wedges that reminded me of high quality jo-jos with the wonderful sauce instead of Ranch. A very good dish. For dessert my wife ordered the bittersweet chocolate terrine with port and caramel-poached winter fruits and hazelnuts ($6.50). I'm not sure exactly why they call it a terrine. It was really just a wedge of slightly soft chocolate, possibly with some espresso added, served with the tasty sauce and poached dried fruits. I ordered the banana sorbet with chocolate shortbread sandwiches. Yum. The banana sorbet was excellent, very banana-y and very smooth, hardly icy at all. The chocolate shortbread sandwich cookies were tasty with a creamy filling, like the best Oreos ever. Honestly, I could have gotten anything on the dessert menu. They all sounded good. Park Kitchen deserves to be ranked right along the better small plate places such as Buckman Bistro, Tabla, and Noble Rot. I think that if you like these places, you'll like Park Kitchen. Even though Park Kitchen does have large plates, it has so many small plates and the feel is so much the same as the small plate places, that that's where I think it belongs. One thing I especially like is that they seem to deliver more than what the menu suggests, while what's on the menu still sounds good. I hate when I got to a restaurant (one of my problems with Higgins) and I'm excited about a menu item and it comes out and doesn't live up to the description. I don't think they're quite the deal that, eg, Lauro Kitchen is, but the portion sizes are fair and, like I said, you get more than what you ask for. Side note: if you're a lesbian or young guy looking for a sugar-momma, you might try here. 90%+ of everyone there was a 35-60 year old middle and upper-middle class woman. I've never seen a restaurant so dominated by women. Odd.

Based on some recommendations, I went to Sukhothai for a second time recently. Had originally gone there when they opened. Sukhothai 2014 NE Broadway 503-331-1235 It's a cute little place that follows the trend of most of the newer Thai places in town to try to make middle and upper-middle class people comfortable with a wine list, decently painted interior, decent tables, and linen napkins. They have a good menu. You'll find miang kum, eg, under the appetizers, although they do use spinach leaves instead of betel. You'll also find things like tod mun pla, fried fish cakes, on their appetizer menu. Their tom kha also comes in the wonderful volcano-style soup bowl with the fire in the middle. (What's the name of this thing? Trillium? Curt?) They have all the standards at reasonable prices -- curries at $8.50 w/ basic meats, noodle dishes the same. They also have several house specials and chef's specials, including gang pa, a coconut milkless curry and dishes making use of salmon and halibut. They also have a large lunch special menu that cuts $2 off the price of most dishes. My wife and I split the miang kum ($6.95) as an appetizer. She got the lemongrass chicken ($9.50), a house special, and I got the green curry with beef ($8.50), my current favorite litmus test. The miang kum was tasty, though, like I said, uses spinach leaves. But I don't consider that a big knock against it. The pieces were fresh (and the thai chiles they used were heinously spicy). My wife's lemongrass chicken probably should have been called peanut chicken because the flavor of peanut sauce was by far it's dominant flavor. That's fine. I think a lot of people would love this dish. The chicken breast was nicely cooked, still moist, and it was a huge portion that looked great. It was served with lots of steamed broccoli and spinach. This would be an excellent choice for anyone wary of Thai food. My green curry was decent, not great, not Cha Ba Thai good, but decent. I do wish more places would use Thai eggplants, though. I need to start bitching out this at Thai restaurants, because Chinese eggplants just get too mushy in curries. Sukhothai is way better than Eagle Thai, which is also in Irvington/Lloyd Center area. It's also better than Dragonfly was, though that place has now been replaced by a Thai restaurant called Ruen, which I haven't tried. Maybe soon.

They should make a special square LC for Volvo drivers. I nominate baked beans for an inaugural dish: "Beans, beans, good for the heart. Beans beans great for the....heart" -- SNL

I think it's just part of the overall difference between American journalism and European journalism. We generally think we're at least supposed to try to be fair and objective. That's falling away a bit, but it's still true to a large extent and readers still expect the attempt. I don't think that expectation exists in Europe. So you're going to find the most exteme examples in places where even we would expect an opinion, like movie and food reviews. I think a reviewer should be able to say anything that is opinion-based. If the reviewer started saying seriously that something was unhealthy, poisonous, that they got food poisoning, that there were rat turds in it, etc, then they open themselves up based on fact. If they're just saying it tastes like crap, though, if they're wrong they'll hurt their own reputations and be discredited anyway.

You'll definitely want to read through this thread: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=34212&st=0 and this one: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=31903

Okay, bought a Benriner today. What the hell, $25 for the larger one at a local Japanese grocer. (This is the one I got, even this color: http://www.quickspice.com/cgi-bin/SoftCart...shtml?E+scstore ) Sliced the hell out of stuff this evening in preparation for dinner. It truly is a "fast, cheerful, and beutiful way of cooking." A few negative notes: * The guard is rather useless, except maybe for the last bits on a potato, but by then you probably don't want those pieces anyway. * The range of thicknesses is pretty small from about an eigth of an inch to paper thin. I really wish it did thicker slices as well. It'd be more useful for things like zuchini and cucumber. * It needs rubber feet. The thing slips easily and you really have to stand it almost straight up. It's not a problem for easily sliced items like potatoes, but more difficult items create a likelihood of getting your fingers. Think of flat cheese graters and you'll have an idea of how it works. I have a cuisipro grater with rubber feet and it works much better than my older flat grater without feet. * The "comb" blades don't seem to work that great except on really easy to cut items. * It's much more difficult to cut some items than I expected. Potatoes were a breeze. But the brussel sprouts I also did with it often got caught up and snagged creating unsafe slicing. And I couldn't shred these with the "comb" blades at all. I imagine even a carrot would take a decent amount of force. I tried to cut ham with it, just to see, and I couldn't at all (at least I won't take my whole finger off, maybe). That said, it's cheap and works for the most part. It's very easy to adjust and very easy to change out the blades. It's also very easy to clean and the nylon surface works great without much friction at all. I think the Bron (this one: http://www.chefdepot.net/mandoline.htm ) is still better overall and maybe even a long term better value. I'd really like the stand and it has a good guard that would be useful for even a whole potato. Also, it has a wider range of thicknesses and is also very easy to adjust. But it would be more of a pain to clean, the metal does create more friction, and it's 4-5 times as much (and actually, it's over $175 at my local Sur La Table). I may get one online if I can find it for less than $100 some time when I have the extra cash, but until I feel like I need it, I'll stick with the Benriner.

I'd go with raw tuna larb before I'd get rid of fish sauce. Hell, I think I might go for tof-arb before getting rid of the fish sauce.

I think you're right to an extent Bux. But that claim cuts both ways. Just as easily, someone could say that they don't understand how you could like a duck liver pate more than a fried bologna sandwich. There are many bases for saying that a food is good, but I think all the attempts at something objective -- complexity, simplicity, subtlety, luxuriousness of ingredients, price of ingredients, novelty, whatever -- consistently fail. More useful are interesubjective/historical means: traditions, cultural norms, and agreement. Problem is trying to commensurate these. You end up with people talking past each other and one group talking down to "low" food lovers of BBQ, or burgers, or Mexican while these "low" food lovers make fun of the admirers of the less familiar foams, pates, and gelees.

There's a reason most, even the top, restaurants in the US hover around $125 for their menus: the market. Compared to the luxurious feasts of the 18th century aristocracies, these meals are simple. They had dishes that took days and days to prepare, where you'd use a dozen birds to make a sauce for one dish. Stuff like that. Imagine the expense. Price is always limited by the market. Dinners could be more luxurious, more expensive, more, more, more at any restaurant in the world. They aren't because they need more than a couple people to eat there. Would you be chastising me for not being willing to spend $10k dollars on the truly ultimate meal? Nearly everyone has an upper limit or a point where they say that the food just isn't worth the money any more. It's relative and contextual, of course, but not unreasonable.

then again spam's become pretty "traditional" in a number of cuisines--see hawaiian or korean. I don't think the problem is that he cooks with processed foods, but that what he and those like him make is akin to such processed foods as SPAM and Velveeta. Gelees and charcuterie always remind me of "lesser" processed foods. I think the comparison of Adria's pizza with a Dorito sounds appropriate. However, unlike others, I think this is an argument for lifting the Dorito, the Twinkie, the hot dog, SPAM, or whatever in our minds. Or at least open our minds to them as good food. I think many people attack "junk" foods because of their form more than their quality. "Processed" has itself become an evil while ironically many of the most respected chefs are doing their own sort of processing. I admire many of the goals of the slow food movement, but I think they make this error assuming that processed is bad. And I think the article pointing out the irony that the slow food movement and this haute processing movement have evolved at the same time is a good one. Personally, I think they both have merit. Fat Guy, I don't know why profitability is an evil. I think the goals of the corporation aren't far from the goals of most restaurants: to make food that people like and thus make money. Most restaurants as most corporate food makers have to balance quality with cost. What's the essential difference between what Adria does and what the chemists for McDonald's (or their additive companies) do that makes the latter bad while the former good? Both are trying to improve flavor using novel means.

I don't drink. That makes my costs much lower than many peoples. I ate the grand menu at CT's, the Chef's tasting menu at TFL, and I don't think there was a choice at I@LW. All were at least $40 cheaper per diner than Herbfarm. But the money issue is more a straw that breaks the back than a determining factor. I've covered these before (and also in the Chowhound post -- I'm Nick -- that you might have read in the discussion there): course timing, meal length, expense, presentation, distance, and service charge. To me, it has a lot of barriers. It's nice (for you) that expense isn't an issue, but I think for most people it is. And paying 33% more at Herbfarm than Trotter's or French Laundry is significant. People value restaurants that serve essentially equal food when they have $15 entrees instead of $25 entrees. $175 versus $125 meals is going to have an effect on most of us. Further, the relative expense of Herbfarm is significant for the area. The bay area, and especially Chicago, have expensive food. Herbfarm may not seem like a big deal if you're from Chicago or New York, but it's significantly more expensive for someone from Portland, like myself.

I'm in the PNW and haven't seen them yet, though haven't been specifically looking. Anyone in Portland or Seattle seen them? Prices aren't much worse than morels.

I kind of thought the same thing when I was reading Fast Food Nation and they were discussing the people who make the flavorings for such foods as McDonald's french fries. Why are these additives demonized, but a foam is lauded?

I'm not sure if I have this exactly right, but I had a Bleu de Canases that was excellent. None of the bitter aftertaste you sometimes get, but all of the flavor.

Of all the ingredients mentioned, the one that always gets named besides avocados is actually the one that's the least authentic (in the most ridiculously purist sense): lime. No citrus before the conquest. I like hass avocado, white onion, roma tomato, a mixture of serranos and jalapenos, a little cilantro, salt, and plenty of lime. Maybe a kitchen sink version, but I love it. Mixing serranos and jalapenos gives a more rounded flavor. Jalapenos are brighter and the burn is focused in the front of the mouth. Serranos burn the back of the mouth.

* Immersion blender: easy to keep some texture in salsas and much easier than a molcajete (if you do get a molcajete, make sure it's a decent one; so many are too porous and brittle -- and remember you need to season them; you might be better off another type of stone mortar) * Spice grinder: just a cheap coffee grinder with a tall lid, but warm your spices on the comal before grinding * Comal: cast iron only! Lodge makes pre-seasoned ones for cheap. Essential for good tortillas and antojitos * Dutch oven: either a Lodge pre-seasoned cast iron one for relatively cheap or a Le Creuset that's enameled for easy cleanup. Great for beans, frying, carnitas, etc. * Tortilla press: the bigger and heavier, the better. So many are light and suck. * Latex gloves: the unpowdered kind. I don't use them, but I think I've built up a resistence, though I still occasionally stick my finger in my eye after stripping seeds from rehydrated or fresh chiles and cry for the next half hour. Depending on your sensitivity and care, these can be a lifesaver. Even Mexicans will put a plastic bag around their hands often as they're going through and picking out chiles at the market

Damn, I wish I would have gotten some tacos from El Gordo after I was at the market when I was down there last month. Stayed safe with my family and only did Sanborn's. I'll have to do some exploring if I'm able to take my little brothers down to southern California and TJ again this spring. I did get some street churros (twice from two different spots) while I was there, though. I've posted this elsewhere, but check out this guy and his setup:

I got a better idea. Send it to me, and I'll tell you if you should want it back.

I got a 7 qt for under $120 at our local factory store. They run $190 at Sur La Table and Bed, Bath, and Beyond. Definitely worth seeking out. They also usually have a section of blemished cookware, too, which is even cheaper. You can usually search through and find some that are barely discernible from the unblemished stuff. Just check for popped bubbles inside that leave a hole to the cast iron. You don't want those. They carry the same warranty as the normal stuff, though. They also usually have a deal with an additional markdown on a color of the month. PS I don't put mine in the dishwasher partially because the rim is bare cast iron, not enameled. Also, another, cheaper option, is a pre-seasoned cast iron dutch oven from Lodge. Quality dutch oven, but without the enamel more of a pain. But it's the classic.

I saw this really bad "concert" from Jamie Oliver this weekend. The only bit I caught was him dancing and singing to reggae playing in time with a movie on a large screen behind him with the words from a lamb curry recipe telling him what to do. It was horrendous. He had some huge crowd there, too. It was so bad, I'd rather watch Dweezil and Lisa's show. This thing can't be worse than that. Here is the episode I saw: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/show_hd/ep...2_30242,00.html And here is the show: http://web.foodnetwork.com/food/web/search...ber=+&x=10&y=12

I made green tea, ginger, and coconut ice creams for a wedding lunch (Thai food) last summer. Actually, what I made was green tea ice cream with chocolate chunks, ginger ice cream with candied ginger, and toasted coconut ice cream. The green tea ice cream was the easiest and tastiest. I didn't use a recipe. I just scalded the base with a healthy amount of green tea leaves in it and then let it rest until I was happy with the flavor, then I strained out the leaves and went about making the custard, cooling it, and making the ice cream. I must admit, however, that I used food coloring to give it a green color. Simple flavorings like this are pretty straight-forward, I think. Much easier than when you need a syrup for flavoring which can throw off the sugar content and viscosity. The coconut ice cream was much more a pain than the ginger or green tea. Take my word for it. Add chocolate. It'll remind you of the combo of mint and chocolate. Fabulous.

A mandoline is on my short list. Actually, I would have bought one a while ago, but I just can't decide which one. I used to own a crappy v-slicer and got rid of it. It was dull and didn't have but two settings for thickness. I've pretty much narrowed my search to the Bron Professional and the wide Benriner. You can get the Bron online for about $100. The larger Benriner seems to run about $35, although I've never looked for the larger one at Asian groceries here in Portland. I remember seeing the smaller one for $20. (I've played with the Matfers, several of them, but don't like how their setup and construction.) I'm less familiar with the Benriner's workings, though I have taken it out of the box once or twice: * Is it fully adjustable, or does it have only two or three thickness settings? * There are multiple blades for it, I believe, including a julienne blade. How hard are they to exchange? * Can it go in the dishwasher? The Bron seems pretty nice. I like the intuitive adjustments. But it is more expensive. I actually think I would like the stand that some people deride. * Specifically, what do you like/dislike about the Bron, especially in direct comparison with the Benriner?