Braised shishito with bonito flakes シシトウのおかかまぶし

 Japanese green pepper, (Shishi-tougarashi or shishitou 獅子唐辛子) is getting popular here. Nonetheless to my surprise, I found a bag of fresh shishitou at our regular grocery store the other day and got it. Eating Shishitou in U.S. is somewhat like a form of Russian roulette  since you can occasionally come across one that is atomically hot and you can never tell in advance which one it might be. Your first clue is when your mouth “catches on fire” as you bite into the pepper. (It seems this happens more often with U.S. raised shishitou than those raise in Japan. Legend says it has something to do with the soil.) In any case, I decided to make a shishitou dish I have not made before and added two small dishes as starters for the evening.

I thought if I de-vein and de-seed the shishitou, chances of hitting a hot one should be much less. So I de-veined and de-seeded and cut shishitou in long quarter strips. I served this with dashimaki だし巻きJapanese omelet with “aonori” 青のり dried seaweed.

Ingredients: (for two small appetizer servings)
4 shishitou, de-deined and de-seeded, cut into quarter strips lengthwise.
1 tsp x4 concentrated Japanese noodle sauce (or half and half of mirin and soy sauce)
1 tsp vegetable oil
3 tsp or more dried bonito flakes.

Directions:
Saute the shishitou in vegetable oil on medium heat for a few minutes.
Turn dow the flame to low and add the noodle sauce and quickly braise.
Cut the flame and mix in the bonito flakes.

I also served two small appetizer dishes. The below is chicken tenderloin (from chicken roasted in the Weber grill) dressed in sesame dressing 鳥のささみの胡麻和え.

“Hya-yakko” 冷奴 cold cube of silken tofu topped with myoga  茗荷 and perilla 大葉 (both from our garden) and grated ginger with the concentrated Japanese noodle sauce.

These three appetizers were a perfect start of the evening. By the way, we did not get any atomically hot shishito in this batch. (Maybe this was due to the luck of the draw or maybe it is indeed worthwhile to removed the vein and seeds.)