Shishito: Summer’s best bite
Woe to the novice home gardener who tries her hand at growing a perfect sweet red bell pepper.
“Do you know how hard that is?” asks Chris Brittenburg, who owns Who Cooks for You Farm in New Bethlehem with his wife, Aeros Lindstrom. And, no, it’s not a rhetorical question.
The thick-skinned peppers take awhile to naturally ripen to a sleek and shiny fire-engine red. If you don’t baby them with just the right amount of sun or keep the fruit lovingly hydrated and fertilized, you could be setting yourself up for an epic fail. You also have to worry about all the garden pests that love to snack on them.
So much goes into creating a beautiful red bell pepper, says Mr. Brittenburg, that even veterans such as himself probably lose about 30 percent of their crop before going to market.
But the slender, bumpy shishito? Now there’s a pepper you can let yourself fall in love with.
Native to Japan, this fingerlike thin-walled Capsicum annuum is harvested while it’s still green. So there’s none of the hang time that is associated with many other garden plants. Shishitos also are super easy to care for and are wildly prolific, says Mr. Brittenburg, who planted the sweet pepper for the first time last year on his Armstrong County farm.
The plants produced so much fruit, “it was the first silver bullet in awhile,” he says. He sowed them again this year, and the farm now cranks out enough shishitos for the 30-plus restaurants it grows for, with enough left over to sell at local farmers markets.
Jonathan Corey, who’s in charge of a 1,000-square-foot garden and greenhouse at Spork in Garfield that includes eight bushy shishito plants, is another huge fan. A chef who has cooked at and managed several different restaurants, including McCrady’s in South Carolina and L’Etoile he loves in their Charlottesville, mild and smoky Va., vegetal flavor. They’re so unassuming, he notes, with a papery thin skin, you don’t actually have to cook them; at Spork, shishitos are one of several peppers in a bright summer salad as well as a crunchy raw garnish for spaghetti tossed with guanciale, eggplant and roasted garlic. Because they’re small and skinny, some assume they’re also hot. But shishito peppers are actually among the mildest chilies, typically rating about 100 Scoville Heat Units. The ubiquitous jalapeno, by contrast, registers roughly 5,000 SHUs.
“But every once in awhile you get a sleeper that’s really hot,” Mr. Corey says. Then boy, will your mouth be on fire.
While you can eat the peppers out of hand, and Mr. Brittenburg often does when he’s in the field,
or use them in raw preparations like a green bell pepper, shishitos are great cooked. Blistered (seared) is the most common way to prepare shishitos. It’s also the easiest, because all you need is a glug of olive oil and a wide saute or cast-iron pan.
Here’s how: Heat the oil until it’s hot but not smoking, then add the peppers and cook them, tossing occasionally, until they blister and a good char develops. When they’re done (it should take about 10 minutes) toss them with sea salt. If you like, squeeze some fresh lemon on top. Eat with your fingers, using the stem as a handle.
Easier still is Mr. Brittenburg’s favorite preparation: toss them with a little olive oil and stick them under the broiler and roast for 5 to 7 minutes, or until peppers are blistered and puffy
They also can be battered for a light vegetable tempura, pickled, tossed into a stir fry, or grilled and chopped for use as a topping for pizza or nachos. Shishitos also can add vibrancy to salsa, aoili or romesco sauce, enliven egg dishes or even be pureed with onion, cucumber and vegetable stock into a spicy summer soup.
In other words, they’re versatile.
Shishitos aren’t new to Pittsburgh. Chef Sonja Finn has famously been growing them for years in the rooftop garden planted by her father, Sean, at Dinette in East Liberty. She serves them grilled with goat cheese and fried almonds, with a dusting of fleur de sel.
But they are growing — wildly — in popularity. Once limited to Asian menus, shishito is the fastest-growing veggie item on appetizer menus across the U.S., says Joe Garber, marketing coordinator for Datassential, which follows trends in the food industry. As of this year, the pepper now is on 3 percent of menus, including chains such as The Cheesecake Factory, and has grown just over a whopping 200 percent since 2013, beating Brussels sprouts, kale and golden beets as rising stars.
In addition to Spork and Dinette, you find shishitos locally at Union Standard, where they’re roasted and served with cheese curds, lime and garlic; as an antipasti at Vallozzi’s, blistered in oil and served with lemon and Parmesan or pickled as a condiment for cotto prosciutto; tossed in a Sriracha aioli with miso salt, lime, cilantro and radish at Butcher in the Rye; and blistered with sea salt at Molinaro’s. At Tako, shishitos are stirred into the queso and also are an optional add-in for the guacamole.
Luckily, you don’t have to be a professional chef to cook upsome really tasty shishitos athome. We offer below three easy, incredibly flavorful dishes that you might just get addicted to — paired with roasted potatoes and Srirachi mayo in a spicy hash; cooked with fresh corn in Japanese curry paste and wine for a summery side dish; and tucked into a corn tortilla with tomatoes, fresh salsa and a poached egg as a dippy taco.
You can buy shishito peppers year-round at Whole Foods and also occasionally at Trader Joe’s. But local is best, since that’s when they’re freshest. If you didn’t think to sow them in your own garden, locally grown peppers are starting to come to market. Kistaco Farm in Apollo is offering them through Penn’s Corner Farm Alliance, and Who Cooks For You Farm this week started selling them at the Squirrel Hill farmers market on Sundays and East Liberty farmers market on Monday. You’ll also find them at East EndFood Co-op.
They add spice to your life not just in terms of flavor: one small cup of shishito peppers provides 80 percent of your daily vitamin A requirements, and a whooping 170 percent of vitamin C.