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?
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.
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.
Oh, they're licensed are they? Well, everything should be just hunky-dory. What could go wrong?
WARNING: graphic!
I guess the blowfish we used to catch in the surf at the Jersey shore are different.
We sometimes fried them up for breakfast.
THIS appears to be the thing that professional fugu chefs are up in arms about. The restaurants that served this ready prepared fugu would themselves only need their own chefs to have a passing familiarity with fugu, because it had been previously prepared by a pro. It's more like a protest for employment security for professional fugu chefs, as this system would allow one professional fugu chef to support multiple restaurants.
Please no Helen Thomas pictures to be posted here!!!
No thanks. I’ll stay with Halibut, Lingcod and King salmon....
Hold muh saki...
Yuck. I can’t understand why someone would want to eat that.
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.
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.