A Fish to Miss

There is of course, more than one poisonous fish such that you will die from eating it, but perhaps this is the most famous.

For those of you who do not know what that is, it is the famous fugu (ふぐ、鯸), or puffer fish. 

Fugu became a bit infamous, especially overseas with its ability to unintentionally kill. Well perhaps whomever is serving it to you is trying to kill you, but I assure you that is not the fishes' intent. Pretty much, this fish needs to only be prepared by an expert, and I even think it is illegal in the United States due to this grave cause for concern (just want to point out my awesome pun...grave concern...). Regardless, you have to be certified to prepare this fish, which I actually just happen to know one. Unfortunately I cannot boast that I have tried it yet, though I do intend to. 

Not all sushi shops will sell fugu. In fact I would tell you most do not. You can normally determine that a shop will fugu if there is a large fish take outside that has several of those suckers (more like blowers, hah!...really, I will show myself out now) swimming around in it. For the most part they will look spotty and fairly unimpressive and perhaps to many a tourist, they will look like an unattractive, unappetizing fish and wonder why in the world one would display it at the front of their restaurant. But for Japanese people this is a way to determine a good restaurant, it also determines the quality of your fish in person. 

As an additional note, they are puffer fish for a reason. They are not those little cute one with the spikes all over it, but they do inflate a good amount if you squeeze them just right. Not that I am recommending you do so...

Japanese people will eat this fish a number of different ways, but perhaps the expense of it and the expense of hiring a professional to cut it up all nice like for you keeps them from eating it so often. I would hazard a guess that most normal people will even eat it less than a year. Hell I even think that years will pass before they take another sampling. I would say that it is just not something more people crave. If you want sushi, you can go to the dollar sushi restaurant or even a nice one and order all the fish and be full without having to eat fugu. That just adds to the expense of things and not necessarily the flavor (as they are getting plenty of it from their other dishes). Additionally, fugu is not really something you make a whole meal out of. You normally order several dishes and that is just one of them. So do not expect to go to a restaurant and fill up on fugu, unless you are of the wealthy sort who can do that.

But back to food preparation, they normally eat this fish as sashimi in a bunch of thin little slices with soy and wasabi and some daikon garnish. They will also sometimes put it in nabe, a nice winter dish that reminds me of a Chinese hot pot, but of course if you told any Japanese person that, they might get offended and insist that either it is totally different or that they came up with it first. Nabe is a dish of boiling flavored water (flavored with dashi or some other subtle flavoring like salt or kelp) in which there are vegetables and a type or two of meat. Meat can vary to pretty much whatever you want to put inside of it.

oh god so many pictures!