Kamaboko is made with cured ground fish paste called surimi.

"beef ball") and pork surimi often are seen in Chinese cuisine.

Nevertheless, some restaurants drop surimi into salads and seafood offerings without advising consumers.

The fish used to make surimi include:

This creates a thick paste called surimi.

He nudges me and says, "Sometimes I leave a little piece of cartilage in there just so the folks know they're not eating surimi."

Surimi refers to a Japanese food product intended to mimic the meat of lobster, crab, and other shellfish.

Many pelagic fish with higher fat contents lack the needed type of heat-curing myosin and are not used for surimi.

Mr. Berelson said it is inaccurate to call the finished products surimi, because the term applies only to the raw material.

There was also a great deal of manufactured seafood at the show - and it was not all surimi, a processed seafood product.

The cold array includes decent salads of fresh fruit and cherry tomato, plus some less appealing ones that combine surimi with vegetables.

Then the market collapsed for surimi, the imitation crab and lobster meat that is Arctic Alaska's biggest product.

Examples of surimi include:

The plant produces several different product forms including pollock fillet block, shatterpack fillets, mince and surimi.

Surimi: Surimi and surimi-based products are an example of value added products.

The second was an aromatic melange of glass noodles combined with pieces of crab-substitute surimi, green pepper, onion and tomatoes.

No. 4 on the list, Alaskan pollack, is widely used to make surimi, a seafood product processed to imitate crab, shrimp, lobster and scallops.

Some examples include: Salmolux salmon burgers and SeaPak surimi ham, salami, and rolls.

(Seafood stick is a euphemism for surimi, the sweetened processed-fish product that is sometimes substituted for crab.)

Saigon noodle soup, a clear broth afloat with pork, shrimp, scallions, vermicelli and surimi slices (crab-substitute), was a delicately seasoned harbinger of entrees to come.

A Future for Surimi Surimi, a manufactured fish and seafood product that couldn't be more high-tech, was first developed by the Japanese about a thousand years ago.

"Surimi is like flour to the baker," said David Berelson Jr., the president of the Berelson Company, the biggest American surimi marketer.

Although illegal, the practice of adding borax to fish balls and surimi to heighten the bouncy texture of the fish balls and whiten the product is quite widespread in Asia.

Bakso or baso is Indonesian meatball or meat paste made from beef surimi and is similar in texture to the Chinese beef ball, fish ball, or pork ball.

Marian Peters of Bugs Organic Food talks of people's attitudes towards eating insects and suggests separating mealworms from their exoskeleton and repackaging them in the same manner as Surimi.