A Cook's Tour_ In Search of the Perfect Meal - Anthony Bourdain [80]
Fugu. The deadly puffer fish of legend. It’s a delicacy. It’s expensive. You must be licensed by the state – after a long and comprehensive course of training and examination – to prepare and serve it. It can kill you. And every year in Japan, it does kill a score or so of its devotees, who are poisoned by the potentially deadly nerve toxins in its liver. First comes a feeling of numbness around the lips, a numbness that rapidly spreads through the central nervous system, paralyzing the extremities. Quickly followed by death.
Sounds cool, right? If I’d had a top ten list of things I absolutely had to try while in Tokyo, fugu would have been right near the top. I had high hopes. I was ready. I wanted the exhilaration of a near-death experience. I’d scheduled my whole trip around fugu season. As I understood it – from careful study of barroom speculation and an episode of The Simpsons – a fugu meal was a game of chicken with all those delicious, if potentially fatal, toxins. There had to be a psychoactive, or at least a physical dimension, to the fugu experience, maybe just enough of the liver in each portion to give you a momentary peek into the void, maybe a sharp but pleasant sensation in the belly after eating, an artificial sense of well-being, a slight MDA-like high as traces of nerve toxin flirted with heart muscles and synapses.
I chose the Nibiki restaurant, run by chef/owner Kichiro Yoshida. Mr Yoshida’s father was the first licensed fugu chef in Japan. Nibiki has been operated by the Yoshida family for eighty years without incident or fatality. You get one shot at running a fugu restaurant. One strike and you’re out. Nibiki is a homey-looking little place with a large plastic puffer fish hanging over the door, an open kitchen with counter, and a raised dining area with tables and cushions.
Mr Yoshida welcomed me into his kitchen and gave me the short course in fugu. A large example of the fabled fish lay on a spotless white cutting board, looking similar to monkfish with its scaleless, slimy, and knife-resistant skin. The anatomy was similar to monkfish, as well: a center spine, no pinbones, skin that had to be peeled off, and two meaty tenderloin-shaped filets on each fish. Yoshida-san quickly zipped off the skin and began carving away some dark bits. A small metal waste container with a hinged lid and padlock stood next to the cutting board. The chef removed a key from a chain and gravely unlocked it. The toxic parts – every toxic part – of the fugu, he explained, must, by law, be disposed of like medical waste, segregated and secure at all times. He trimmed away any remaining skin, a few parts around the gills, some tiny, innocuous-looking dark spots on the flesh, then soaked the clean white meat repeatedly in cold water. The liver, I have to say, was lovely: creamy café au lait-colored, engorged-looking, with a foie-gras consistency. It looked appetizing, like monkfish liver. ‘Do you eat any of the liver?’ I asked hopefully. ‘No,’ said Mr Yoshida. Many are tempted, he explained. Most of the fatalities from fugu, he assured me, occurred among fishermen and fishmongers who were unable to resist the tasty-looking livers – and whatever holistic, restorative powers they might believe the deadly but attractive organ to have. According to Mr Yoshida, the problem is that there’s no way to tell how much toxin occurs in any particular fish. A big fugu with a large, plump liver might have relatively little toxin in its liver. Take a nibble, or prepare a nabe (broth in a pot) with a tiny bit, and you might well be fine. Conversely, a small fish’s liver might well be overloaded with toxin; take one lick and you keel over stone-dead. A daredevil fugu fan might become emboldened by the occasional nip of liver, only to take one toxin-heavy bite of another one and check out for good.
As the chef carefully cleaned