Tuesday, December 02, 2014

"One more pigeon response" UPDATED

This afternoon brought with it an email avalanche of unprecedented proportions. Nothing mysterious about this - I, too, am catching up from the holiday weekend - but it did make a change from the usual stream of H-France (French history listserv) items. Not, of course, that there weren't those as well, including one with the subject, "One more pigeon response."

Expect substantive posts at some point, but in the mean time, some shameless consumerism. Recent exciting purchases include:

-COS tights, in Yves Klein blue. That color can be tricky - what looks right on the computer screen may be all wrong in person. But having been inside a COS or two, I remember from their color scheme that their royal blue is the right one.

-One let's say family-sized package of hot chili peppers, from H-Mart. I know nothing about hot pepper varieties, and last time ended up with ones that were chili-shaped but basically bell peppers. These are... sufficiently spicy. Adding a couple whole to last night's hot-pot managed to infuse the broth with a pleasant spiciness. Meanwhile, chopping up one and using it in place of chili flakes in an arrabiata sauce this evening managed to turn that pasta into a meal that would have the maximum number of chili-pepper icons at a Thai restaurant. I can't decide whether that's a good thing or not.

UPDATE

The chilis:



-Uniqlo "room shoes," in an elegant plaid that's sadly no longer available.

5 comments:

Nicholas said...

A thing about chilis: on the milder end, there's tremendous variation amongst chilis of the same variety, unless you know for a fact they've all come from the same plant, and even then, they're only uniform--they might be on the milder or spicier end. (Rick Bayless has an extended rant in one of his cookbooks about this) There's no real way to know except to taste them; a mixed package could have any combination. I find this maddening when cooking Mexican.

(Hot chilis and dried chilis tend to be more uniform: dried Sichuan peppers or fresh Thai Birds Eye Chilis are pretty much always at the same general level)

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

Hmm. I think the ones I bought are the Thai Birds Eye chilis. Just updated the post with a photo. If someone can read Korean, we may have our answer.

Nicholas said...

Now, of course, I remember that this is A Thing about Bird's Eye Chilis: they get dropped into Thai dishes whole, or you bruise them without breaking them completely open, and (so far as I've seen) never use more than five this way unless you're looking for trouble. In general, removing the seeds and the ribs from the chilis should mitigate the spice, but only up to a point.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

I'm thinking that's what these are...

Nicholas said...

Oh, yes, I meant to say that in my last comment: based on appearance and behavior, they certainly seem to be.