SC - Thoughts on Food

[Phil & Susan Troy]

CorwynWdwd at aol.com wrote:
> 
> In a message dated 9/13/98 12:10:02 PM Eastern Daylight Time, phlip at bright.net
> writes:
> 
> > Also, the Japanese have a special delicacy, which if not prepared properly,
> >  is so poisonous that if you eat one of these fish, can't think of the name
> >  of it, with a drop of the toxin on it, you're dead before you hit the
> >  floor.
> 
> The word you're looking for is blowfish. Even properly prepared it is somewhat
> toxic, and the macho thing to do is to eat it until your fingers and toes
> tingle.. THEN stop. Sometimes the tingling starts, or is noticed too late and
> the record indicates that several people die a year earing even properly cut
> blowfish.

The name of the fish is fugu, and it is a type of pufferfish. Several other
types of pufferfish have similar nerve toxins, in one degree or another,
stored in their livers. Not all blowfish are deadly to eat, even if one does
overdo it on varieties with liver toxins. One thing I have seen, as a kid, is
a unique method of cleaning them entirely by hand, sans knife. You essentially
grasp the head in one hand and the body/tail in the other, and pop the head
off like a bottle cap, causing skin and entrails to come off with the head.
This method may have been devised to prevent accidentally cutting into the
liver, but I don't know for sure.   The Northern Puffer, which used to abound
in the fish markets and local fisheries in the Northeast of the U.S. has no
such toxin in its liver. As a child I used to be able to catch nearly
unlimited quantities of these, they were regarded as trash fish by commercial
and many sport fishermen. Somewhere along the line (maybe 1980) somebody
figured out that a fish as ugly as the Northern Puffer could be quite tasty
(sea robins / gurnards too!) and suddenly they became not blowfish, that you
couldn't give away, but Chicken of the Sea, Sea Drumsticks, and a lot of other
really stupid names, ranging from around 8 - 12 dollars per pound. Now they're
nearly extinct in my area.

Perhaps we'll see if the misapplied fugu scares will help the species make a
comeback. They're toxic, folks! Deadly!!! Stay away from the Northern Puffer!

While you're at it, you really should avoid fugu, too.

Adamantius  

- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================