lines of flight

One of my missions in life is to taste every product made with a mouth-watering substance known in Finnish as salmiakki. I usually explain it to my American friends as “salty black licorice” but that description in no way does justice to this undeniably acquired taste.

Anthony Bourdain said something about all cultures having that one food that they are crazy about that no one else understands, but when he did the salmiak-vodka shots at the biker bar on the Swedish episode, I think he overlooked the passion Scandinavian people have for this substance. He treated it like street food, easily endured by one so iron-intestined as he.

But my love for salmiakki goes so much deeper. I’m not even ready to talk about it right now except to say that one of my missions in life is to taste every product made with salmiakki.

First on my wish list of new products to try–this is kind of insane–is salmiak HONEY.

I first found mention of this in European Food Scientist magazine and later stumbled on a blog out of Japan that I think is run by a Finnish person(??) and I love his name: Jussi Salmiakkinen.

After running Jussi’s salmiakki honey page through Google translation, what I got was that he couldnt find the ingredients for salmiakki listed on the label, so he was wondering where the flavor came from.

But the Google-English translation of the Japanese page written by a Finn includes such wonderful bits of JaplishEngrish as, “Me the sense power which pulls the ‘your black candy’ seems that more and more becomes powerful. Fearfully the [ru] should!” Whoa. And also: “Timidly when you try looking at the food constituent chart, there is no indication which [sarumiatsuki] seems!” Sarumiatsuki = salmiakki?!

I mean I already knew this stuff is off the food charts, just am not exactly sure what they are trying to say. What I need is to try this salmiak-honey, said to be good for “desserts, drinks and spreads.” How can it be?