Yes, I'm still stuck in the apartment, trying (desperately) to add ten more pages to my last paper. It must be done by Friday, or I won't be able to graduate!

But of course, I need a break--which is why I'm here, writing this post. The only problem is that I haven't had much time or energy to explore restaurants or cook new stuff. (My lunch was a frozen pizza, which I stole from Patrick's freezer.) So, I'll dig out a recipe from before...

I wonder if anyone has been wondering about the small green peppers on the top corner of the page. They're called "shishi-tou" in Japanese, which means "lion-sized pepper." It might sound odd that they're thought to be lion-sized, since they're much smaller than the American green peppers; shishi-tou's are only about two to two-and-a-half inches long. What they're compared to is the red hot peppers. Compared to them, shishi-tou's are much bigger--lion-sized, indeed.

Flavor-wise, shishi-tou's are more bitter than hot. (Though sometimes you run into stray hot ones.) I used to dislike them as a child. My mom used to grill them on a dry frying pan, and my father loved to dip them in soy sauce with grated ginger. They're great friends of a beer drinker, he used to say. But I just couldn't take the bitterness.

As I grew older, though, I started to enjoy the bitterness, and shishi-tou's are now one of my favorite summer veggies (although they're available all-year-round now). I often stir-fry them in sesame oil with ginger, and season them with Japanese fish sauce. But when we were photographing the shishi-tou's for this web site, I decided to go for something else.

First, I marinated chicken pieces with salt, ground pepper, and sesame oil, and coated them with a bit of corn starch. (This is easily done in a small sandwich bag. Throw everything in, and knead the bag a few times. The corn starch and oil help keep the moisture in the meat from escaping. A great neat tech from the Chinese cuisine.) Then I made the sauce: I simply mixed a generous tablespoon of miso (fermented soy beans), a tablespoon of mirin (sweet rice wine for cooking) and a little splash of soy sauce in a smal bowl. I cut up the shishi-tou's and removed the seeds, and also cut up some eggplants.

When everything was ready, I heated oil in a frying pan, threw some grated ginger (yes, they're ubiquitous in my kitchen), and browned the surface of the chicken pieces. Then I added the veggies, stir-fried them a while, pour the sauce in, and cover the pan to let it simmer for a few moments. I served the whole thing over rice, but they can also be served separately. Bon apetite!

Shishi-tou's are available in Asian markets, often under the generic name of "small sweet peppers" or some such. Just be careful not to use those murderously hot ones from Thailand (or Mexico, for that matter)!

Okay, I spent enough time on this--time to go back to Uncle Tom's Cabin and "Benito Cereno"... Oh, the wonderful world of slave literature!