When we talk about fugu, we are actually talking about a family of more than 100 species of tetraodontids, fish with a face that can swell in the face of an enemy.
Above all, cooking a fugu requires special skill to prevent its tetradotoxin from being released in its flesh and paralyzing the person who ingests it.
Attention danger !
Here's one of the potentially deadliest foods in the world: fugu.
For his column in
Historically Vôtre
, on Europe 1, Olivier Poels returns to this very particular fish, which has nothing to do with a common monkfish, an ordinary mackerel or a lambda sardine.
A fish that must be handled with extreme vigilance, as the culinary journalist explains, with three things to know about this authentically incredible species.
>> Find all the shows of Matthieu Noël and Stéphane Bern every day from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Europe 1 as well as in replay and podcast here
A fish or a poison?
It is the riskiest, the most dangerous, the most intriguing of all fish.
The Japanese have been eating fugu for over 2,000 years.
After succumbing to its tasting, they finally identified where the problem was, but we'll come back to that.
It is a family which brings together a hundred fish, with three particularities.
The first is that they have a face: they don't have their eyes to the side, but they have their eyes to the front, like us.
They have another peculiarity: they are able to swell.
When they see an enemy, they swallow water and triple in size.
And the third and most important of the peculiarities is that they contain tetradotoxin, a powerful poison that paralyzes.
It is a neurotoxicant.
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Special training to prepare it
There are a hundred people who die every year in Japan after eating poorly prepared fugu.
This requires training for the sushi masters who are stamped fugu, who have to learn over several years how to prepare this famous fish.
The fillets must be lifted without touching the liver or the intestines.
If you pierce it, the liquid spills into the net, you eat and you are dead.
A newcomer to the Mediterranean
With global warming, fugu is also spreading in the Mediterranean, in particular on the Turkish coasts or on the Greek coasts.
There have been the first cases of death after eating fugu in these areas.
Be careful the next time your regular Greek fisherman comes to bring you his catch of the day: if there is a harefish inside (his other name), it's not really a good sign.