It`s lethal when not properly cleaned. If you ingest even a small amount, death will follow.
Each year dozens of fishermen die in Japan after taking even one bite. There is no doubt that fugu fish or just fugu, as it`s called in Japan, is extremely poisonous.
But if you can believe millions of Japanese fugu buffs, it also is one of the most delicious fish in the world.
It`s now available for the first time in Chicago. The Hotel Nikko`s Benkay Restaurants recently began to air freight the delicate blowfish from Kyushu, the southern island of Japan, and have put fugu on the menu.
This is possible because Benkay executive chef Shinji Kimura, 35, a kansai or master of the classical cuisine of western Japan, is a licensed fugu chef. As such he is permitted to prepare fugu for eating by rendering it harmless.
Americans who might know fugu as globefish, blowfish or pufferfish, think of it as an ugly prickly fish which puffs itself up to several times its size to frighten enemies. But the Japanese know it well enough to have a saying about it: Fugu wa kuitashii, inochi wa oshishii, which translates ”I would like to eat fugu, but I would also like to live.”
If you`re not sufficiently frightened by now, here are the toxocological facts: The liver and ovaries of the fugu fish contain a poison called tetrodotoxin, about 100 times more deadly than potasssium cyanide, which causes lethal paralysis within minutes.
Poison can spread
If the liver and ovaries are not removed immediately as the fish is being cleaned, the poison spreads and permeates the fish`s flesh. To provide further intrigue and peril, the poisonous liver resembles the harmless male fish testes which Japanese men consider a virility builder.
Like oysters, fugu is said to taste better in season. From September through March each year, approximately 750 tons (valued at 12 billion Japanese yen or about $90 million) are prepared by licensed fugu chefs and served at specialty restaurants. Fugu restaurants can be identified by painted blowfish signs hanging outside. Out of season, some fugu restaurants close; others stay open with other menus.
Kimura, who has cleaned hundreds of fugu for diners (all of whom are around to talk about how good it was), said that as far as he knows, there isn`t another fugu chef in the Midwest.
”In San Francisco or Los Angeles I think there are other fugu chefs,”
he said. Of the three Benkay restaurants in America, however (Chicago, New York, San Francisco), Kimura is the only executive chef with a fugu license.
Kimura, a fourth-generation chef, is the first in his family to master the art of fugu. To learn fugu, he asked a master chef to demonstrate the technique.
”After observing the intricate cutting methods I studied from books, teaching myself to differentiate between the 14 varieties of blowfish,” he said. At the same time I continually examined the live fish at markets and in restaurants.”
When Kimura was confident that he could identify all blowfish varieties and organs at a glance, he practiced. ”I set myself a work routine where I cleaned and prepared dozens of fugu,” he said.
”After several weeks, when I was certain I could do it infallably, I applied to the government to take the fugu examination.”
The examination contains written and practical/oral sections. But since there is no known antidote for tetrodotoxin, it`s especially exacting.
Only about 25 to 30 percent of the 1,500 yearly applicants receive a license. The written section requires chefs to demonstrate a theoretical knowledge of the fish varieties, inside and out.
20-minute limit
This is followed by a demonstration exam in which the chef must distinguish testes from liver and cut the fish correctly-all within 20 minutes under the scrutiny of three officers from Tokyo`s Department of Health.
Was Kimura nervous? ”No,” he said, then said something in Japanese which might translate as ”cool as a kyuri (Japanese cucumber).
”Applicants are not asked to eat the fugu they prepare during the exam,” he said.
Kimura serves a whole fugu meal-called fugu nabe-in the private tatami dining rooms at the Benkay. A week`s notice and a two-person minimum is required for this $150, six course meal, which includes four fugu courses plus a traditional appetizer and dessert. It would cost $300 a person in Japan.
Fugu nabe dinners begin with a fugu sashimi course, known in Japan as
”tiger” sashimi, cut into slices so thin you can see the pattern of the serving platter through them. The fugu is often arranged so it resembles a giant flower or bird, such as a crane which is said to bring good luck.
A special ponzu, a strongly flavored sauce of chopped green onions, radish, rice vinegar and Japanese soy sauce accompanies this course.
Kimura follows the fugu sashimi course with a small order of grilled fugu, served with a light Japanese soy sauce. This is followed by deep fried fugu, coated with a special batter that comes from the powdered starch of a Japanese lily plant, accompnied by a fresh ginger soy sauce.
Stew kept hot
The final fugu course, called fugu nabe, consists of a one-pot dish containing vegetables and fugu. This delicate stew is set on a portable heating element at the table and a kimonoed waitress simmers a seaweed broth while you watch, adding Japanese cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, tender chrysanthamum leaves, tofu cubes, decorative rice cakes and the fugu chunks.
Canny diners reach for the fish backbone in the pot, said to be the most delicate part of the cooked fugu. To eat it, suck the meat off the thick bones.
Hot sake is the suggested accompaniment. The Japanese enjoy adding a dried fish fin to the sake when it accompanies fish entrees. Since the fin must be the same kind of fish as is being served, it supplies calcium as well as linking the entree with the beverage.
Guests ordering sake with fugu at Benkay restaurants, will find a piece of dried blowfish fin in their drinks. ”This does not change the taste of the sake, but some guests detect a faintly different fragrance, Kimura said.”
Fugu lovers used to eat fugu with an awareness that death could result. This is no longer the case. In Japan and Chicago, fugu is prepared by licensed chefs and is perfectly safe.
It`s also delicious. Descriptions of its flavor without sauce range from
”a faint, almost tasteless taste” to ”delicate.” A few fugu eaters claim that fugu sashimi has a faint numbing quality, which is said to be pleasurable. Others insist that the hint of numbness comes, not from the fugu, but from the strongly flavored ponzu sauce which accompanies it.
Mizuhiko Tamura, a developmental consultant who grew up in Japan and who loves fugu, described its flavor as ”faintly fishy and extremely delicate.” The raw sashimi is ”also delicate in flavor, but it has a certain chewiness to its texture, compared to other sashimi,” Tamura said.
Tamura has been known to tease Westerners by picking up a chopstick full of fugu, putting it in his mouth and grabbing his throat frantically in mock distress. –
