There are certain dishes that can be cooked only by a licensed cook. I am referring to Fugu the most poisonous fish, which can be handled only by the chefs in Japan. Fugu is referred to as blow/globe/puffer fish. The ovaries of the female Fugu and liver of Fugu fish contains potent neurotoxin called tetrodotoxin (TTX) enough to kill 30 people.
It takes two years to train a chef to cook Fugu, but still there is an average of two hundred deaths from the consumption of Fugu. No matter how careful the cooks are in dicing Fugu, it only adds to the ordeal, in both sense of the term. The most stupendous fact about this fish is that it costs $100 to $200 per person at restaurants in Japan…costly ordeal. The various dishes that can be made out of Fugu are Fugu-sashi- thinly sliced raw fugu, served with ponzu dipping sauce (mixture of citrus juice and soy sauce), Fugu-chiri
vegetables and fugu are simmered in dried Kelp sauce in a large pot, Fugu Kara-age or deep fried fugu and Fugu Hire-zake (Fugu testes in a glass of hot sake).
This lethal fish has become very common in Japan for its chickeny taste and the resultant of this substitution in the outset of bird flu can be seen in the following comment: ‘Last night he and I ate fugu; today I help carry his coffin’.
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