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Miss J

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  1. Frantically hanging onto summer last night:

    Rubbed a mixture of hot smoky Spanish paprika, sugar, salt, black pepper, dry mustard, celery salt and garlic granules over a rack of baby back ribs and left in my fridge for around 6 hours. Then got the BBQ going and set it up for indirect grilling (one gas burner on, the other off, drip-pan on the bottom) and put my oven thermometer on the top grill rack. Cooked the ribs as slowly as my silly little BBQ would allow (it was pretty difficult to keep the heat down as low as 300F) and brushed them halfway through with a mop-ish sauce of cider vinegar, sliced shallots, dried chile pepper flakes, salt and black pepper. They turned out okay, but a little chewier than I would have liked. Obviously, I need to either get a bigger BBQ or find a better way of controlling the heat in my little one...

    I also made a variation of my standby potato salad (new potatoes boiled, sliced into thick coins, tossed with sauteed shallots and red wine vinegar, then finished with a drizzle of olive oil and lots of chopped parsley and thyme), and a sort of cabbage-less coleslaw inspired by a lovely yoghurt-y vegetable dish I had at a Turkish restaurant last week.

    Finished the whole thing with a few enormous, ripe black figs baked in a bit of red wine, honey, butter and bay leaf and served with a blob of thick Greek yoghurt. These were definitely the most successful part of the whole meal. (Or maybe I'm just a dessert freak.)

  2. You can get them at the Spice Shop in Portobello too, which also sells decent (though tinned) refried beans and tomatillo salsa.

    Cool Chile also does mailorder: www.coolchile.co.uk

    And I know what you mean about chipotles in adobo - I'm a bit lost without them. Until I discovered Dodi's chile company, I used to exceed my flight weight allowance in chipotle tins every time I went home. :smile:

    Edit disclosure: being a computer geek surrounded by design geeks, I wrote Adobe instead of adobo. Ooops.

  3. Looks like Le Pigalle's new-found success isn't just confined to Saturday nights. I tried to pop in last night (Tuesday) with a couple of friends, and once again it was completely packed.

    Francoise seemed stressed - not only was he terse and unsmiling, but he actually avoided eye contact. He couldn't have seemed a more different man than if he'd been replaced by the Body Snatchers. Hopefully this was just a one-off bad night (I noticed he had one really large table of around 12, and another reserved for 10 arriving imminently). Still, it was a little worrying.

    I think I'll hold off Le Pigalle for a few months and see if things calm down. However, if people are as won over as we are, it looks like it'll be reservation-only for the foreseeable future.

  4. Soba, do you take reservations? :wub:

    I made an altogether simpler meal last night. We both came in late from work, so I threw together a wok of ants-climbing-a-tree. The mung bean noodles were fantastically slippery, and looked great in their red-chili-flecked gold sauce with spring onions. Followed with chilled melon cubes and LOTS of water, as I am still trying to rehydrate in the wake of Saturday's e-gullet outing...

  5. Cheers for the recipe & tips. I found Adam's rosewater-as-damson-enhancer suggestion intriguing...I've a bottle of rosewater that I think to use for baked figs, but I've never used it with plums before. Nina, when you do plum clafloutis do you usually stick to the brandy suggested in the recipe, or have you found a more appropriate flavour match? I have a bottle of armegnac, but I usually just drink it rather than cook with it.

  6. Last night:

    Cold Chinese egg noodles with sesame sauce - a complete cheat, as the sauce is actually meant to be for bang bang chicken. It was easy though - just sugar, soy, black vinegar, Chinese sesame paste (tommy, take note), homemade chili oil, sesame oil and slivered spring onions. The chili oil gave a nice, slow building heat with no sharp edges. I finished it with a tablespoon of toasted sesame seeds and a scattering of roasted Sichuan pepper.

    Marinated aubergines

    Sliced aubergines brushed with peanut oil and fried 'til golden, then layered with finely minced ginger, garlic and shallot and left to steep at room temperature in a little dark soy & peanut oil until meltingly soft.

    Stir-fried pak choi with garlic

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