Trevor Corson and fugu
28Jul09
This is really an old news story but I don’t think I have posted it here before - Trevor Corson, author of “The Story of Sushi” and “The Secret Life of Lobsters,” discusses how he narrowly escaped a death by poisonous blowfish and the secrets you never knew about eating sushi. NECN Wired, 2007.
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in japan fugu is commonplace enough to find precut sashimi in the grocery (although I would never buy it, probably out of paranoia). people aren’t really afraid of fugu and don’t really refer to it as “poisonous”. the apparently few deaths each year are supposed to be usually due to people without a license attempt to eat it themselves.
i have been to a fugu restaurant myself, had a wonder meal with at least 7 or 8 courses, each a different preperation of fugu: sashimi, battered and fried, in soup (nabe), in japanese steamed egg custard (chawanmushi), I can’t even remember all the ways but it was delicious! my favorite part by far was what I was told was the liver, sashimi style, but I’m not so sure it was
in actuality the poison doesn’t directly kill you per-say and people who have been given “lethal” amounts can still survive if properly treated quickly enough. wikipedia has a in interesting (and scary) section on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugu#Fugu_poisoning