Many of the dishes I seek out to cook are items I once sampled at a restaurant or friends house. Shishito is no exception. If I remember correctly, the first time I had shishito was at Itacho (years ago) in Los Angeles, and I instantly fell in love. When I moved to New York, over ten years ago, I went crazy trying to hunt down these green treasures, but to no avail. While I’ve run into them with more frequency in the last coupe of years, for a while, in the NY food scene, they were MIA. In fact, on occasion I have even seen them wriggle their way into select Whole Foods stores. And then, of course, directly into my kitchen.

As I said, it was a long, loooong time ago, but here is my rendition of the – sometimes spicy, sometimes not, sautéed Japanese green pepper treat.

• -Wash and dry the peppers
• -Heat a large frying pan or wok, add about 2 tbsp roasted sesame oil
• -Stir fry peppers over high heat for about 2 minutes, or until the pepper skin starts to blister.
• -Sprinkle some low-sodium soy sauce over the peppers, toss while it burns up and then remove from heat
• -Place peppers on a plate and then sprinkle sparingly with sea salt
• -Serve immediately