Shirako to you too!

While I do consider myself to be fairly adventurous in the kitchen both as a part time family chef and as a full time diner, there are simply some foods out there which are almost bordering on the ridiculous. Finding weird foods in Asia, according to a ‘Brit’, has been somewhat entertaining especially when I came across Shirako.

Shirako simply means ‘fish sperm’ and if you refer to Wikipedia it will redirect you to the word ‘Milt’ for the definition. No need I know what that is, but I’m sorry, being an equestrian lady the first thought that came to my ‘blonde’ head is how do you get sperm from a fish? They are slippery little critters!

Shirako is a Japanese delicacy and directly translated into English it means ‘white children’. This ‘delicacy’ actually isn’t the sperm as we would think, it is a Cod’s sperm SAC, why didn’t they say this in the first place? So now extracting it from a fish makes sense and apparently it is meant to ‘melt in the mouth with the consistency of soft butter”. Ummm I think I should actually be quiet here!

The Japanese are known to eat all and everything, they hate to waste any part of an animal and whilst I applaud the lack of food wastage, there are times when I would quite happily open the trash can lid.

If the thought of eating a fish’s genitalia isn’t enough to put you off then the look of it probably would; brains or a tapeworm segment (that’s the equestrian in me again) comes to mind!

Shirako can be cooked by boiling, frying, grilling or eaten raw ( definitely passing on the latter method), but however it is done, no amount of cooking will take away the horror when you tell your friends what they’ve just eaten.

Being a lover of caviar, the female eggs, maybe, just maybe, fish sperm just might be horrifyingly tempting, but I would have to been starving!