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Three kinds of sea cucumbers, ranging in price from $25 to $110 per pound

There's nothing vegetarian about a sea cucumber, and, though you can cut it up and use it in a salad, it isn't green and doesn't crunch. Also known as sea slug (or less felicitously as sea rat), the creatures are shell-less jelly-like gastropods about the size of a finger. Usually sold in dried form, they are quite expensive; in fact they are considered a luxury ingredient in Chinese restaurants.

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From time to time, Fork in the Road asks it readers to identify something we've stumbled on. In this case it's a flowering herb -- almost too beautiful to use in cooking -- discovered at Atlixco Deli, the premier purveyor of herbs used in southern Mexican cooking.

So, what is it? And how is it used?

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TheKMan

On the hottest days of the year, my family sat in the shade and drank Falooda, an iced milk drink made with a bit of rose syrup and a ton of basil seeds. I still have a soft spot for the seeds, which swell up with a thick coat of jelly when they've been hydrated in water (and look almost exactly like frog eggs).

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Jonathan Billinger

Is it time for hops, marijuana's legal cousin, to come back into the kitchen? Writer Peter Smith over at Food & Think has a nice post about the seasonal ingredient, which he picked himself from his father's hop bines.

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The Organ Meat Society recently enjoyed a splendid meal at northern Chinese restaurant Minzhongle, on Main Street in Flushing. But one dish really stood out, name-wise, bringing a chuckle to everyone's lips -- Big Buekstraps Paddywack. What could it be? We wondered as we ordered it.

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No, it's not a potato, though it looks like one.

Fork in the Road often finds itself turning to its readers for identification of foodstuffs we stumble on in area markets but can't figure out. We have another request. This fruit was being sold at the open-air market in Chinatown at the corner of Mulberry and Canal.

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What's the brown pickle the arrow's pointing to? I sure don't know.

I encountered this lovely pickle plate in Brooklyn at a former-Soviet restaurant from the Caucasus. It includes two types of plum, two types of cabbage, pepperoncini, green tomatoes, and cukes. But what's the brown-skinned thing with darker brown spots and a prominent, woody stem spot at the top. Anyone know?

A better picture of the thing follows.

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A friend picked this up at an open-air market in Goa, a former Portuguese colony (now a beach resort) on the west coast of India. It's definitely edible, but does anyone know what it is and what it's used for? Thanks -- we're dying to find out.

I was munching with some friends on a giant heap of dishes at new Shandong restaurant M & T, when the waitress sidled up to me and whispered: "You want to try some seafood from my town of Qingdao. Something we only have there?"

How could I resist? The tubes were rubbery, slippery, and slightly salty, but took most of their taste from the surrounding ingredients in the stir fry. The picture above gives a fair approximation of what it looked like. It is not intestines of any sort, nor is it pasta, though a three-year old at our table mistook it for pasta. Anyone know what this marine animal is called? 44-09 Kissena Boulevard, Flushing, Queens, 718-539-4100

Just when you thought all the utensils in the world had been invented, and just when the drawers in your tiny kitchen were filled up with so much crap you couldn't shut them, along comes another utensil that you might be tempted to add to the collection. The skup (pronounced "scoop" the press release prompts, we prefer "scupp"), is a serving spoon for sauces. But unlike a real serving spoon, it won't slide down into the sauce, because it's equipped with a curl at the top that allows it to depend from the rim of the serving bowl. As if that weren't enough, the surface of the skup allows you to write on it with grease pen. Now, the inventor intended you to inscribe the name of the sauce on the skup, but why not improvise at your next dinner party? How about writing "You're too fat already!" on the front?

The skup is available only on the web from Placetile Designs, at six for $19, here.