Diverging Paths

My good buddy, Eddie Lin, has some rocking footage up on his food blog covering his recent foray into the world of nyotaimori, which is the Japanese custom of serving sushi on the bodies of naked women.

According to Eddie, Hadaka Sushi in LA has just upped the ante in Los Angeles' highly competitive sushi restaurant industry.

Click here to see the footage. Work safe, depending on your work. Eddie even interviews the girl the sushi is being served on.

Crazy...

I was washing the dishes last night when my personal cell phone and the land line both started ringing at the same time. It was waldensian and theoni with the same weird question.

Waldensian: "What's a harsmar?"

Me: "You mean a Mars bar?"

Waldensian: "No. A harsmar. Spelled the way it sounds. Double-boiled in coconut."

Me: "Umm... Can you give me some context?"

Waldensian: "We're at a [Chinese sweets shop] and they're selling 'harsmar'. It's all over the menu."

Me: "I have no freakin' clue. Crack addicts."

Waldensian: "You call yourself Chinese and a food blogger and you don't even know what harsmar is?"

Me: "I usually read the Chinese characters instead of trying to deal with Chinese-fucked-up English. Can you describe them to me?"

Waldensian: [with what Japanese he remembered from college] "I think the first character is snow. Can't help you on the second one."

Me: "Dude. I don't know."

waldensian tried to take a picture of the sign with his camera phone and send it to my phone, but neither he nor theoni were successful. I finished washing the dishes, then decided to do a little research online because the mystery of the silly question was still bugging me.

Hasma:

"Hasma is a Chinese dessert ingredient made from the dried fallopian tubes of the hermaphrodite frog Rana temporaria chensinensis, also commonly known as the snow frog or forest frog. Hasma is often mistakenly described as toad or frog fat, since it is sometimes referred to as 'toad oil' in Chinese.

Hasma is sold dried as irregular flat pieces and flakes ranging from 1-2 cm in length and 1-5 mm in thickness. Individual pieces are yellowish-white in colour with a matte lustre, whose surface may be covered with off-white pellicles. When rehydrated, dried hasma can expand up to 10-15 times in size.

The dried hasma is rehydrated and double-boiled with rock sugar to create a glutinous texture and opaque color. Dried or rehydrated hasma has a slight fishy smell. In its unflavoured form it is sweet and slightly savory in taste with a texture that is glutinous, chewy, and light, very similar to that of tapioca in a dessert."

I couldn't figure out what it was because I was more familiar with the Mandarin name, Há Mǎ Yóu. In any case, it's good stuff. Anyone brave enough to try it?

This entry has been moved to my new food blog

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