Air Fryer Shishito Peppers with Togarashi

I remember a time not all that long ago when shishito peppers--those crinkly mild green Japanese chiles--were hard to find in markets and just a little less so as a bar app at hip restaurants. It was a big score back when Susie's Farms was in farmers markets and had them in season.

I now regularly see them--no surprise here--at Japanese markets--but last week I found shishito peppers in a produce display at Sprouts. And bought a bag.

It coincided with my recent purchase of my second air fryer. Air fryer number one was big--too big for my countertop so I had to use it on my stove--and the one time I used it, the house stank from burning plastic. So back it went. Then I read about a much smaller, much less expensive air fryer that would be perfect for my single-person household. The brand is Dash and they have the fryers in multiple cool coolers with a small compact footprint, and both manual and digital displays.

Here's mine (and no, I don't get any payment from either Dash or Amazon):

I used it for the first time over the weekend on, what else, the shishito peppers. Normally, I would toss them in a little oil and let them blister in a hot cast iron skillet. It's not a big undertaking, unless the temperature is soaring in the summer. But cooking them up in the air fryer--essentially using convection heat--was even better because I didn't have to hover over the skillet and deal with peppers so twisted they wouldn't stay where you turned them.

With the air fryer all I had to do was toss them in a little vegetable oil and place them in a single layer in the crisper  basket, which rests in the crisper drawer. The downside? Because it's a small unit I had to do two batches, but it wasn't a big deal since the cooking time is a mere five minutes. This particular air fryer is very intuitive so you press the power button and it immediately shows the temperature, which I turned up from its default 360° to 390° with the + button.

Then you press the timer/temperature button, which displays the default time of 10 minutes and move it to 5 minutes using the - button. Press the start arrow button and it takes care of the rest. In fact, the temperature and timer alternate on the display so you know exactly what is going on as it counts down. And once it hits the one-minute mark, it counts down in seconds.

Midway, pull out the basket and shake, then put it back into the machine. When the timer beeper goes off, check and make sure your shishitos are sufficiently blistered. If so, pull out the basket and use tongs to pull out the shishitos (excess oil may have collected in the bottom of the crisper drawer below the basket so you don't want to risk burning yourself by flipping it over).

Now how do you season your shishitos? If you're like most people you salt the shishitos, then squeeze lemon juice over them. And that's perfectly wonderful. I'm fond of ponzu sauce on them as well. But with this batch I sprinkled coarse sea salt and shichimi togarashi, which is a traditional Japanese seasoning mix.

It has a bite, thanks to chili pepper and szechuan pepper. But it also contains black and white sesame seeds, orange peel, and dried basil. So it offers plenty of zesty flavor, too, and pairs beautifully with the blistered shishitos.

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Delicata and Carrot Soup

I always think that my preferences for fruits and vegetables leans toward spring and summer--peaches and plums, strawberries, asparagus and corn, and, of course, tomatoes. And yet when I roam through farmers markets or places like Specialty Produce starting around October and see all the gorgeous variations of winter squash, I just fill up with joy. They're all so extravagantly colored and shaped. And the flavors are so specific to the time of year.

One of my favorite winter squashes is delicata. I love the sweet flavor and the fact that I don't have to peel it. The skin is thin and perfectly edible. And, I love the seeds. My dad taught me how to prep and roast pumpkin seeds when I was a little girl and I do it on almost every winter squash I buy. It's such a waste not to!

Delicata squash on the left

On Halloween I had a long striped Delicata squash whose future I was contemplating and decided it was meant for soup. But which way to go? If I have a complaint about winter squash it's that it can be kind of challenging to bring flavors to it that won't be overshadowed by its own flavor. So I rummaged through my fridge and came up four ingredients that I thought could pull it off--even if they didn't seem to go together: carrots, mirin (rice wine), white miso, and fresh lemongrass. I had shichimi togarashi spice seasoning, a spicy multi-ingredient Japanese mix that contains chili pepper, black sesame, white sesame, orange peel, basil, and szechuan pepper. And I had onions and garlic.

Since soup is one of those wonderful dishes that don't require precision, I figured I'd just go for it. I sliced up the carrots and roughly cut the onion. I minced the garlic and peeled off the tougher layers of the lemongrass and then chopped that. Pretty soon, ingredients were going into the medium-size blue Le Creuset pot my mom gave me when she moved out of her house. I added a little water to the sauteeing onion, garlic, and carrots to keep them from burning while I dismembered the squash and pulled out the next of seeds. Once I added the squash and the rest of the ingredients, along with water (I didn't have any stock on hand but you could use chicken or vegetable stock to make it even richer) I brought the pot ingredients to the boil, the reduced the heat to simmer for about an hour until the squash softened. And, oh, the aroma. It turns out combining mirin, miso, and lemongrass is, well, inspired. Sweet and salty and full of umami.

Now you could enjoy the soup as it was--a loose vegetable soup. But I prefer creamy soups so I pulled out my stick blender and puréed it to a silky consistency. I had some pumpkin seed oil from Vom Fass I had been waiting to use, so I drizzled that on my soup once I poured a serving into a bowl. And sighed after the first bite. Lucky me. I had plenty to enjoy with a hank of warm sourdough bread for a few more meals!

Delicata and Carrot Soup
(printable recipe)
Serves 2 to 4

Ingredients
Olive oil for sautéing
½ large onion
5 cloves garlic, minced
5 carrots, sliced
1 large Delicata squash, cut into cubes
¼ cup fresh lemongrass, roughly chopped
1 cup mirin
2 tablespoons white miso
1 tablespoon shichimi togarashi spice mix
Water or chicken or vegetable stock
Pumpkin seed oil (optional)

Directions

1. In a medium size pot, sauté half an onion and five cloves minced garlic. Add carrot slices. Add a little water to prevent burning while cutting up the squash (save seeds for roasting).
2. Add squash pieces, chopped lemongrass, mirin, white miso, togarashi, and water to cover.
3. Bring to the boil then simmer for about an hour until squash is soft.
4. Use an immersion blender to purée. Drizzle with pumpkin seed oil from Vom Fass. Serve with crusty sourdough bread.







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Ginger-Garlic Flavor Bomb Cornish Game Hens

I'm an admitted garlic fanatic. I just love the stuff. I also love ginger. In early September I wrote about grating and freezing ginger so it would always be on hand and I wouldn't have shriveled roots that would inevitably be tossed. It's been a great kitchen short cut. Then about a month ago I came across a piece in Bon Appétit extolling garlic season. Test kitchen manager Brad Leone offered up a wonderful garlic and ginger paste that combines the two with olive oil. He puts the paste in ice cube trays to freeze and then store in plastic freezer bags. Well, I was on it. Only instead of the ice cube trays, I used a small cookie scoop and froze the little flavor bombs on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet, then popped them into a freezer bag. They're remarkably versatile and so handy. You can use them to do a stir fry, make a vinaigrette, or add to soup or stew.

I happened to have bought a Cornish game hen last week and now that the weather has--for now--cooled, I defrosted it and was going to just roast it with garlic salt, smoked paprika, lemon juice, and olive oil. It's sort of a lazy go-to for me for poultry. Then I recalled my ginger-garlic flavor bombs. Eureka! I took out half a dozen of them to let thaw and considered what else would work. I remembered the most marvelous chicken recipe in Deborah Schneider's book, Baja! Cooking on the Edge. I love her marinade of garlic, chipotles in adobo, salt, and oil. So, I modeled a very different sauce on the concept. This one is made up of ginger, garlic, shichimi togarashi (a vibrant Japanese seasoning containing chili pepper, black and white sesame seeds, orange peel, basil, and Szechuan pepper), lime zest and juice, salt, and olive oil. It's just a bit chunky, even pureed. Slather it all over the hens and let it penetrate the birds for at least a couple of hours but up to overnight.

In the past I've grilled Deb's garlic chipotle birds and you can do that with this recipe, of course. But on this Sunday night I chose to roast the hen in my oven. I enjoyed it with small red, purple, and white potatoes rubbed in olive oil and garlic salt, with the hen resting on a pile of fresh baby spinach, dressed with its juices and a good squeeze of lime. The hen burst with bright ginger and citrus flavors and each bite ended with a bit of a kick of heat from the togarashi. After marinating for five hours, the flesh was moist, but the skin was perfectly crisp. And with the leftover marinade I gave a punch of flavor to a salmon fillet.

Ginger-Garlic Flavor Bomb Cornish Game Hens
(printable recipe)
Serves 2

Ingredients

6 ginger-garlic flavor bombs (directions on Bon Appétit), thawed
1/4 teaspoon shichimi togarashi
Zest of 1 lime
Juice of half a lime
Pinch of kosher salt
1 1/2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 Cornish game hens, trimmed and halved or quartered

Directions

In a small prep food processor or a blender, combine the first six ingredients and puree. You should have about a half a cup of marinade.

Slather ginger-garlic mixture all over Cornish game hen halves. Place in sealable plastic bag and refrigerate for 2 hours or up to overnight.

You can grill the hens or roast them in the oven. To roast, pre-heat oven to 375˚. Roast hens skin side up for an hour or until the skin is brown and juices flow clear.

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