The Ascending Spice

Three words: Wa Sa Bi!
How weird is that stuff?
I've been getting into Sushi lately, and it's mostly down to one thing: WaSaBi! If you've never tried it before, stop reading this now, pop out to your local asian grocery store (Coles and Woolies will probably have it, but this way you'll feel way oriental), buy a tube and just suck in its juicy goodness.

Are you back? Whoa!!!! Did that blow your mind or what? It's not its spiciness that has me hooked, it's what that spiciness does. It burns just like chilli, but it burns up. If you bight into a chilli (say, if because your punk of a brother told you that it was just like a baby carrot), then the burning goes down your throat, and that's kind of nice (if you happen to like that sort of thing) but gets kind of mundane. I mean, of coarse it burns DOWN your throat, everything goes DOWN your throat, bolus stimulates your faucial arches, hello swallow reflex, down we go. The food goes down, the burning goes down. Are you with me? But Wasabi! It burns up. Somehow, like some out-of-body experience the burning separates from the Wasabi, so when the Wasabi heads south, the sensation heads north and ends up in your nose. It sits there and gets stronger and stronger until you think your head is going to melt like that guy at the end of the Indiana Jones movie who drinks from the wrong Holy Grail, just when you think that's going to happen, it goes away and you have to explain to your friends why you just burst into tears.

From my extensive research on the topic (ie reading the packet) I have discovered some fun facts about the green ascending spice. And I shall leave them with you.

Stay cool my peeps.

Fun facts about Wasabi (some I got from the packet, some I made up myself):

• Some people call it Japanese Horseradish


• "S&B (R) Prepared WASABI in a tube" As my product is called, rather humourously reads just like a sentence


• Wasabi contains Colour (100), (102), and my personal favourite, (133)


• 'Oriental Merchant', the importer of S&B Wasabi has a "Hotline" - it's 1800 806 842, but that's not the point: A hotline! get it?


• S&B Foods can be found at 18-6, Nihonbashi Kabuto-cho, Chuo-Ku, Tokyo


• A cryptic crossword clue for Wasabi could be: "Sushi ingredient was a bit spicy within (6)." or "I swab a confused hot sauce (6).". Try it on your nan.

Night