Karasumi is a food product made by salting mullet

roe Roe ( ) or hard roe is the fully ripe internal egg masses in the ovaries, or the released external egg masses, of fish and certain marine animals such as shrimp, scallop, sea urchins and squid. As a seafood, roe is used both as a cooked in ...

pouch and drying it in sunlight. A theory suggests that it got its name from its resemblance to the blocks of ''sumi'' (

inkstick Inksticks () or ink cakes are a type of solid Chinese ink used traditionally in several Chinese and East Asian art forms such as calligraphy and brush painting. Inksticks are made mainly of soot and animal glue, sometimes with incense or medicin ...

) imported from

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

(''

Kara Kara or KARA may refer to: Geography Localities * Kara, Chad, a sub-prefecture * Kára, Hungary, a village * Kara, Uttar Pradesh, India, a township * Kara, Iran, a village in Lorestan Province * Kara, Republic of Dagestan, a rural locality in Da ...

'') for use in

Japanese calligraphy also called is a form of calligraphy, or artistic writing, of the Japanese language. Written Japanese was originally based on Chinese characters only, but the advent of the hiragana and katakana Japanese syllabaries resulted in intrin ...

. Karasumi is a high priced delicacy and it is eaten while drinking

sake Sake, also spelled saké ( ; also referred to as Japanese rice wine), is an alcoholic beverage of Japanese origin made by fermenting rice that has been polished to remove the bran. Despite the name ''Japanese rice wine'', sake, and indee ...

. It is a softer analog of Mediterranean Bottarga. It is a speciality of

Nagasaki is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. It became the sole port used for trade with the Portuguese and Dutch during the 16th through 19th centuries. The Hidden Christian Sites in the ...

and along with salt-pickled

sea urchin Sea urchins () are spiny, globular echinoderms in the class Echinoidea. About 950 species of sea urchin live on the seabed of every ocean and inhabit every depth zone from the intertidal seashore down to . The spherical, hard shells (tests) of ...

roe and

Konowata , is a food in Japanese cuisine made from various marine animals that consists of small pieces of meat in a brown viscous paste of the animal's heavily salted, fermented viscera. The raw viscera are mixed with about 10% salt, 30% malted rice, ...

one of the "three ''

chinmi {{Nihongo, Chinmi, 珍味 is a Japanese term meaning literally "rare taste", but more appropriately "delicacy". They are local cuisines that have fallen out of popularity or those cuisines that are peculiar to a certain area. Many involve pickl ...

'' of Japan". The town of

Donggang Donggang may refer to: Mainland China *Donggang District (东港区), in Rizhao, Shandong *Donggang, Liaoning (东港市), county-level city in Dandong, Liaoning ;Towns Written as "东港镇": * Donggang, Huilai County, in Huilai County, Guangdon ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

specializes in the delicacy. Mullet fishing in Taiwan can be traced back to when the island was under Dutch colonial rule.

References

{{Japanese food and drink, state=collapsed Japanese cuisine Taiwanese cuisine Roe dishes

See also

References