Horse Clam
We sometimes have no idea at all about the tiny (one-bite sized) sushi-topping in front of us except for its name and its taste: Which part of the body is it from? What kind of creature is it? When I first saw the living horse clam in a small water tank at the corner of the fish section in the local supermarket, I stood there, petrified by the creature’s unusual appearance. At the bottom of the water tank, something thick, round, and long, like an elephant trunk, was stretching, and at one end of this object, valve-shaped appendages were snapping at it. What was this creature?

It was a horse clam. On sushi rice, it looks moderate, having no distinctive characteristics in comparison with other shellfish toppings: ivory-colored, shaped like rectangle, flat, and no pattern. Although this was, for me, the most mysterious shellfish, I have found answers to all of my questions thanks to the sudden encounter! In nature, horse clams do have one very noticeable feature: they have a huge siphon. Moreover, their siphon is much bigger than the size of their valves, and it doesn’t look as though they could put their entire siphon inside of their valves. According to Wikipedia, horse clams cannot draw their siphons into their valves..... They live in sand about 30 meters under the surface of the sea, hiding themselves vertically and completely under the ground, and when the temperature of the seawater is cold, they stretch their siphons above the sand to get plankton.

The siphon is the part which is used for sushi toppings. Considering its size, I wonder how many sushi can be prepared from one siphon? It has a remarkably sweet & somewhat milky taste, tender, crunchy (especially the tip of the siphon), a slight stringy texture, and an aroma of the ocean.