Posted on 05/18/2012 2:54:31 PM PDT by MinorityRepublican
The Japanese delicacy fugu, or blowfish, is so poisonous that the smallest mistake in its preparation could be fatal. But Tokyo's city government is planning to ease restrictions that allow only highly trained and licensed chefs to serve the dish.
Kunio Miura always uses his special knives to prepare fugu - wooden-handled with blades tempered by a swordsmith to a keen edge. Before he starts work in his kitchen they are brought to him by an assistant, carefully stored in a special box.
Miura-san, as he is respectfully known, has been cutting up blowfish for 60 years but still approaches the task with caution. A single mistake could mean death for a customer.
Fugu is an expensive delicacy in Japan and the restaurants that serve it are among the finest in the country. In Miura-san's establishment a meal starts at $120 (£76) a head, but people are willing to pay for the assurance of the fugu chef licence mounted on his wall, yellowed now with age. He is one of a select guild authorised by Tokyo's city government to serve the dish.
When he begins work the process is swift, and mercifully out of sight of the surviving fugu swimming in their tank by the restaurant door.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
I catch them all the time. I slam them against the pier and cut the line. Ugly bastads..
I guess it beats blowing up cuttlefish.
Who figured out how to prepare them in the first place?
Honorable Chef-san #23—he survived unlike his 22 predecessors. :)
Two of the best meals that I have ever eaten have been in Japan.
One of them was breakfast outdoors in the garden of a Kagoshima ryokan overlooking the Sakurajima volcano across the bay.
The other one was the complete fugu dinner that I had in Osaka. Very elegant presentation of a delicious multi-course meal. The fugu was sliced so thinly that it was almost transparent. Somebody else paid for that one...
I’d rather test my culinary fate with a White Castle cheeseburger and onion rings.
That question is related to the one about who first discovered that it's best not to mix poison ivy leaves in with your other salad greens.
I used to work with Japanese people. One of the Japanese ladies watched me eat an apple without peeling it first. She said that she thought it was gross to eat unpeeled fruit. They even peel grapes before eating them. However, they will eat ANYTHING that comes out of the ocean. Jellyfish, dried little fish with the dried fish guts inside, herring roe, poisonous fish, yum yum. The Japanese are inscrutable.
I'd scrute one.
Scrute one? We need pics for a blowfish thread!!
Same thing with cashews. Mysterious.
Scrute you!
Octopus, potato, corn, mayo, squid and tuna pizza >.< :p (barf)
When I first got here.. the first food mistake I made was pointing to some onion rings on the menu.. looked like the ONLY edible thing there...
..
was fried squid >.< puked and wretched for an hour :/
The sixth husband...
Oh, they're licensed are they? Well, everything should be just hunky-dory. What could go wrong?
WARNING: graphic!
Kind of chewy was it??
You should try frozen grapes on a hot summer day. Yum!
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