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 ...
Meant to include you on #59...
I found this information about the effects of Tetrodotoxin
poisening:
The first symptom of intoxication is a slight numbness of the lips and tongue, appearing between 20 minutes to three hours after eating poisonous pufferfish. The next symptom is increasing paraesthesia in the face and extremities, which may be followed by sensations of lightness or floating. Headache, epigastric pain, nausea, diarrhea, and/or vomiting may occur. Occasionally, some reeling or difficulty in walking may occur. The second stage of the intoxication is increasing paralysis. Many victims are unable to move; even sitting may be difficult. There is increasing respiratory distress. Speech is affected, and the victim usually exhibits dyspnea, cyanosis, and hypotension. Paralysis increases and convulsions, mental impairment, and cardiac arrhythmia may occur. The victim, although completely paralyzed, may be conscious and in some cases completely lucid until shortly before death. Death usually occurs within 4 to 6 hours, with a known range of about 20 minutes to 8 hours.
Andrew Breitbart may have been poisoned by this method. I wonder if an analysis for Tetrodotoxin was conducted using solid-phase extractions involving chromatography/mass spectrometry in Breitbart’s plasma? Anyone with access to a fugu fish could have prepared a toxic brew for him and served it in a drink.
My mother in law used to buy and prepare them all the time years and years ago. She knew what she was doing. And...the cost wasn’t what it is today.
Someone trying to commit suicide.
Nope. Bright red is the opposite of cyanosis.
Dropping DRT (dead right there) is the opposite of a 4-6 hour slide to death.
First thing I ever saw in South Korea was an old guy coming down the sidewalk with a push-cart and every little kid running up to him and I figured that had to be the ice-cream man... Silly me, that was the octopus man.
I remember finding myself lost in a Seoul neighborhood one time in the vicinity of a honey-bucket truck. I was fighting throwing up and trying desperately to get out of the vicinity of that damn truck.
My post was in reference post #21 showing a honey-bucket man.
Best meals, period, I've eaten were in Japan. In the U.S. (outside of Daniel and Per Se in NY) one of the best meals was at a sashimi/sushi place in WDC - a chain of three restaurants, one in WDC, one in Tokyo, and one in the Hague.
The fugu in Tokyo was sliced so thin that it was almost transparent. Somebody else paid for that one...
Somebody else paid for almost all of my meals in Japan, especially the fugu. It was ethereally delicious but nothing special compared to everything else.
The Japanese can do with four or five ingredients what the French do with 29 or more. Even agricultural prefectures like Yamagata are superb - the fruit combined with the better-than-Kobe cattle.
Is that a rate of exchange issue? Even around 2000, $100 fugu restaurants were considered dicey in my limited experience (in Tokyo). $200 was more the norm unless my memory is way off - but I wasn't paying.
Some trial and error was involved.
I’d let you test that dinner on your own, tho.
You remember when they running too? You’d catch tons of them. My Dad cooked them up for us all the time. Not much meat in them but good tasting.
I can remember catching so many in a morning we couldn’t even use them all. I’m talking late ‘60s, early ‘70s.
The surf was loaded with them, at least off of LBI.
That is what I heard too from a Japanese when I asked about Fugu.
Some people think fear makes it taste better. Did you know you could die?
It was not in my plans for that evening.
I’m more disturbed by the bomb-headed chicken.
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