The genus Capsicum is a broad one, and I’ve been on a stellar pepper jag these last few weeks as I cook my way through as many species as I can find.
All peppers are green when unripe and most turn colors as they mature. Bell peppers, for example, taste vegetal and slightly bitter when they’re green. But leave that very same pepper on the bush until it turns red or yellow or orange or brown and it’ll be sweeter and softer in flavor, tasting more like a fruit (which it is).
This really came home to me when shishito peppers showed up at Eckerton Hill Farm. Shishito are a small frying pepper a couple of inches long. In Japan they’re picked when green and served grilled on skewers, hot from a little charcoal hibachi, or else tossed into a super-hot wok or cast-iron pan just slicked with oil and cooked until they’re blistered and barely soft. About one in ten is ferociously hot, so eating a plate of them is a little like playing Russian roulette, but they make such an incredibly delicious snack that you want to play that game.
Grower Tim Stark is a pepper lunatic, but he has apparently not been to Japan (or perhaps he’s a pepper iconoclast.) He lets his shishito ripen until they’re a deep red and just thinking about drying out. I almost didn’t recognize them at his stand the first week (and neither did the Japanese couple standing next to me). Still, I was so happy to see them that I bought a bunch. It may just be that Tim is a pepper genius—ripe shishito are even better, since the char bounces off the ripe sweetness instead of reinforcing the bitterness of the green ones.
In the interests of international culinary relations I should mention that many other cuisines have peppers they treat the same way. Look out for nardello peppers from Italy and the pimentos de padrón from Spain, to name two that you might be able to find if shishito aren’t available.
Pinterest
