If you've see the film Amadeus, you may recall the scene where the tormented Salieri is visited by Mrs. Mozart, and he offers her a sophisticated aphrodisiacal Italian confection called the Nipples of Venus. Well, Suzette of Traveling in Style remembers the scene well, and has had a fascination with the unusual sweets "since the movie was released."

Today I was intrigued and entertained by a savory variation of that dish Suzette talks about on her site: the Nipples of Warsaw.

There's no real chance that I would ever spend the time and effort to recreate that sweet confection, so I did the next best thing: a rendering in brussel sprouts, deviled ham and capers...Picture it - wee little brussel sprouts -cooked and scooped out - stuffed with deviled ham and topped off with a single caper. Nipples of Warsaw.

I found the recipe in the 1964 version of The Joy of Cooking ( the good version - not that crappy one that came out in 2001) and thought then as I do now that they were the height of canape elegance. So I made them from memory for that night in Texas.

I know precisely the phenomenon of which she speaks: in films, I often seen a intriguing (most likely foreign) dish that I pine over and hope to recreate in my kitchen.

One striking example was the exquisite Japanese soups featured in the delightfully off-the wall spaghetti-western-meets-noodle-shop-sex-comedy Tampopo. I so wanted to recreate the perfect steaming bowls of udon shown in the film, complete with those pink-and-white spiral-shaped kamaboko fishcakes called naruto (which could easily be called the Nipples of Tokyo). I'm embarassed to admit I have twice bought sticks of brightly-hued kamaboko fishcake at Asian groceries, only to to be disappointed by my soup, the flavor of the fishcake or both. Alas, in this case, my reality did not measure up to the warm, brothy, celluloid fantasy. Kamaboko is odd food for obsession, as this Japanese website unwittingly shows:

Though you'd hardly know it from its flavor or odor, kamaboko is made from fish. Texture is the main criterion for quality, but this is particularly difficult to describe in words. "Rubbery" is close. Perhaps "chewy" is better. In any case, the usual translation of kamaboko as "fish paste" is totally misleading, not to mention unappetizing.

But technically it is a "paste," made from pureed fish meat, mixed with a binder such as arrowroot or various kinds of potato flour. The fish is steamed until it is uniformly soft. Before it is mixed with the starch, salt and sometimes sugar, all the pesky bones are removed, too. This produces an easy-to-eat source of protein, and it means practically any fish can be used—even the very bony varieties that other fishing cultures consider "trash."

In ancient times, it was wrapped around sticks of bamboo, resulting in a "cat tail" look from which its name is derived. But today it usually is formed into small loaves, weighing roughly a pound each. Supporting each loaf is a thin plank of untreated wood, usually pine, which serves as a self-contained cutting board. This is useful because whether kamaboko is served by itself as an appetizer with a little soy sauce, or added as a garnish to soups, noodles or stir-fries, it is normally presented in slices about three to four millimeters thick.

Typically, the outer few centimeters of a loaf of kamaboko are colored with vegetable dye, usually pink. Perhaps this is because its "real" color—most kindly described as "off-gray"—is rather bland.

Hungry yet? Actually, the type of kamaboko described next is my favorite kind, at least for its visual appeal.

Sometimes it comes in a tube-like shape, often with lateral ridges. When sliced, the tube reveals a spiral of pink coloring into its center, and what were the ridges now form a kind of gear-tooth effect around the disc. Kids love it...kamaboko, believe it or not, is really delicious. Acquire some if you can, and taste it yourself.

If you'd like to learn more about the technology and terminology assocaited with fish processing, try OneFish's glossary of fish terms [PDF file]. Ah, yes. Rubbery, chewy, but delicious. Not quite. But that doesn't mean I won't try again - perhaps with something nattily English from Fawlty Towers.

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