Would you eat fatty frog tissue to look younger?
Once a delicacy devoured by emperors, hasma features predominantly in desserts, but would you eat the fatty tissue near the frog’s oviducts for younger-looking skin?
This delicacy was once only available to emperors and their wives. It is gelatinous, slithery, predominantly lacking in taste or smell. It is said to be excellent for skin, although those with ranidaphobia may jump out of theirs at the thought of it.
The dish to which we’re referring is hasma, or xueha (雪蛤) in Chinese – fatty tissue near the oviducts of a frog. There are a number of common misconceptions about hasma, which is eaten mostly for health reasons.
Misconceptions abound
When I first tried hasma, at an award-winning Cantonese restaurant in Hong Kong, it was described to me as the fallopian tubes of the rare snow frog.
First misconception: the frog. Hasma is typically harvested from the Asiatic grass frog and not a rare snow frog. A common myth cemented through naming, word of mouth and the ingredients alternate naming, snow jelly. “The Chinese name is, literally, snow frog,” says Kwan Man Wong, executive chef, Old Bailey in Hong Kong. Perhaps this misconception is also history driven, with emperors partaking in many rare ingredients. Now, though, it comes from farmed stock, with frogs especially bred for both culinary and medicinal purpose. The other main misconception is what it is one actually eats. It is not fallopian tubes, or more correctly oviducts, but is the fat surrounding or near the oviducts that is eaten.
Harvested once a year, the frog is first partially sun-dried; once ready the hasma is removed and further sun dried. Like bird’s nest, it needs to be soaked before it can be used for culinary purposes. As it can only be hand-harvested, it is expensive – although not much is needed; it swells considerably as it soaks from dry to wet.
Textural appreciation
There are numerous ingredients in the Chinese pantry that are greatly appreciated for the textural qualities they bring to a dish, including hasma. It is an ingredient that has authors and chefs highlighting and praising this textural quality.
Noted author and Chinese cuisine expert Fuchsia Dunlop chose to serve it at a dinner party to impress. As she wrote in a piece for FT Magazine, “Chinese hosts like to honour and amaze their guests with rare and wonderful ingredients.”