Shishito peppers are my new favorite vegetable...and for a guy who spends most of his waking hours thinking about produce in one form or another-that is saying something!
The Shishito pepper is a thin, succulent morsel apparently from Japan. It reminds me of seafood, some diminutive green sea creature fried to perfection. Teri says they are the anchovies of the vegetable world. In any case, they are a small, thin skinned, oblong pepper that you fry whole. You sprinkle it with salt (the best you have), hold them by their little stems, and munch them right up to the stem. Eating the seeds and all reminds me of eating the bones of small fish. The taste is slightly bitter, smoky, with the flavor of a spicy pepper but none of the spiciness and some of the creaminess of grilled eggplant. People say one in every 10 is spicy but I find them all pretty mild. But succulent! Man, a plate of slightly crispy, salty sweet peppers with a cold beer is almost the only thing I want to eat this summer! This is definitely going in my seeding chart for next spring.