Any information on chilies and peppers used in Japanese cooking?

Question

I have a few Japanese-language cookbooks with recipes which use 'shishitou' - they look to me like regular supermarket green chilies but are used similarly to a vegetable, so are obviously not as hot. I usually substitute large green chilies from my local Indian grocers which have very little heat but otherwise with the flavour of a chili rather than a sweet bell-type pepper. Am I on the right tracks?

Also, how hot are red tougarashi usually? In pictures these look like the fairly hot chilies I can get locally but even halving the amount given in a recipe the result was excessively hot, which seems unlikely to me given the fairly tame nature of "hot" Japanese curry roux.

Finally I notice from the photgraphs that Japanese green bell peppers are different to the one available here - ours are large and thick fleshed, but the Japanese ones seem quite small and uneven, with a thin flesh more like chili peppers. Does anyone know if there is a corresponding difference in flavour?

Answer 1

1) shishitou is like a green bell pepper, sometimes you can get a hot one but its not very common. You are on the right track.

2) tougarashi- usually comes in powdered form. Its called Shichimi togarashi. Basically you sprinkle it on udon soup. or other soups. Its pretty hot, kinda like cayenne pepper.

3) nope, no difference. They might be slightly sweeter, depepnding where you are.

4) Another condiment made of pepper they use is Sansho powder- which is a pepper like ingredient. Have fun with it!!

Answer 2

Thats because most bell peppers are grown in hot houses!...they might be using organic grown peppers which are not so big and uniform in size...as for chillies!....the best for heat and flavour are jamaican scotch bonnets?...they look like distorted ping pong balls in all colours yellow /green/orange and red...use sparingly though...

Answer 3

I've had a love affair with chilis since a child and have found these 2 websites invaluable for finding similar local, subsitute capsicum for the more exotic ones often reffered to in asian recipes. You've got to chose the right ones or you may end up with something totally inedible.

//www.aaxnet.com/clove/ingredients/chi...

http://www.chili-seeds.com/about_chilis....