| |
 |
Fugu eating around the world
|
Puffer fish have fascinated observers around the world for centuries. Symbols of the fish have been identified on ancient Egyptian tombs dating back almost 5,000 years. The Egyptians apparently used one puffer species as a ball in a primitive game of bowls. The highly toxic Red Sea porcupine fish may have prompted the biblical injunction:
“These ye shall eat of all that are in the waters: all that have fins and scales shall ye eat: And whatsoever hath not fins and scales ye may not eat; it is unclean unto you" (Deuteronomy 14:9-10).
Puffers are also found in the Indian Ocean and in the South Pacific. Puffers in North American waters can be equally deadly. John Steinbeck and Edward F Ricketts described in Sea of Cortez how they offered to buy a puffer from a boy in Baja California, Mexico but the boy refused, “saying that a man had commissioned him to get this fish and he was to receive 10 centavos for it because the man wanted to poison a cat".
In China, fugu can be found in rivers and is said to look like pigs and make a noise like pigs to ancient Chinese people; therefore, people use two characters to call the fish that mean “river" and “pig".
Fugu is also eaten in the Korean peninsula, but is not very popular.
|
|
|
|
