Half dead or full dead fish?

[hshiau]

Interesting article

about a chef in Taiwan getting in trouble over his preparation of a fish. I've seen it in Japanese restaurants as well so it's definitely not something new. It's interesting that Taiwanese officials are trying to get him to change his preparation. Talk about separation of kitchen and state!

Anyone ever try this before? I was going to order it once but my dining companion was having trouble dealing with a whole fish, let alone one that's twitching.

[MarkIsCooking]

I don't have any problem with a whole fish and I've had some great preparations this way. Where they mention dropping a live fish into a deep fryer, I've had that as well. Deep fried catfish is popular in some places in the south and some places will fish them out of a tank, coat them and into the fryer they go. At 375 degrees or whatever the fryer is set to, I can't imagine the fish lives more than a second. I think it's hard to say that this is any less humane than the way most chicken and cows are slaughtered.

I do have a problem with the fish still being alive on the plate. I can't imagine that being an enjoyable dining experience.

I spent some time staging in a restaurant once where they had scallops so fresh that you could literally see the muscle still moving in your hand as you sliced it down (for serviche).

Edited July 9, 2007 by MarkIsCooking (log)

[Peter Green]

This isn't an uncommon approach in the North East of Asia. The Japanese have a number of such dishes, the most approachable being what I refer to as "dancing prawns" where the fresh prawns are shucked so quickly that the head - presented before you on a plate - is still doing the watusi while you take down the flesh. Again, the impact is on the freshness.

The two Korean dishes that stand out in my memory are what we mislabled as "mountain octopus" - "san" for mountain, rather than fresh. These are small octopus that you take whole, part of the experience is in feeling their pucker grasps as you take them down.

Another dish was fresh sashimi, carved away from the flapping fish. A grouper, as I recall.

In all cases the taste is, obviously, as fresh as can be, if sometimes unsettling.

On the European side, I recall a maggot ridden cheese in the south of Italy that is purported to be quite tasty! And the venerable Bush Tucker Man (what a great hat he had) could go on for hours about the selection of choice grubs to be had.

There must be more, mustn't there?

Cheers,

peter

[sanrensho]

Perhaps the Taiwanese government objected to the chef's poor/messy plating skills.

As Peter Green mentions, presentations involving still twitching fish/shrimp are not uncommon in Japanese cuisine, such as plates of sashimi or a nigiri of iki ebi (still twitching shrimp). The difference is that these presentations actually look appetizing.

[DCP]

On the European side, I recall a maggot ridden cheese in the south of Italy that is purported to be quite tasty!

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That would be Casu Marzu from Sardinia. A creamy delicacy that started as a round of Pecorino, but good luck finding any outside of Italy.

I'd probably still try it if someone cleaned out the maggots first.

[hummingbirdkiss]

I ate tiny baby crabs one time that were still alive with hot sauce..that was a very unusual kind of gaggy sensation..they tasted very good actually..but..I had a lot of trouble with the first mouthful and swallowing them was a great effort..more because they felt so funny poking into the inside of my mouth .....so really ....I prefer to have things stop twitching before they go in my mouth ...however if someone invited me to this place and offered to buy it for me to try ..I would not say no! I am pretty bold about food

[hshiau]

I ate tiny baby crabs one time that were still alive with hot sauce..that was a very unusual kind of gaggy sensation..they tasted very good actually..but..I had a lot of trouble with the first mouthful and swallowing them was a great effort..more because they felt so funny poking into the inside of my mouth .....so really ....I prefer to have things stop twitching before they go in my mouth ...however if someone invited me to this place and offered to buy it for me to try  ..I would not say no! I am pretty bold about food

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Actually, I don't think you actually eat the twitching part. Can't deep fry something and expect it to twitch. It's the non-fried part that still moves.

I'm actually surprised that the animal rights groups in the United Stated haven't had an issue with this if they're up in arms over in Taiwan.

[jean_genie]

Nope, haven't tried this particular fish dish, although I have eaten a live sea snail. Soon after I arrived in Japan last year and began teaching at my school, I was invited by one of the marine teachers to go snorkelling, where he plucked a sea snail from a rock and handed it to me to eat. Being an adventurous eater, I love sashimi and raw fish, so I didn't initially give it much thought to eating the snail, but then I saw it move! The teacher saw the look of hesitation on my face and chuckled! With my pride slightly dented, I quickly put the wriggling thing in my mouth. It was really good! Nothing like super-fresh seafood, even better when they are plucked straight from the sea and handed to you!

[Malkavian]

It seems like kindof fetishizing "freshness" to me /shrug.

[Fat Guy]

Oysters and clams on the half shell are alive when you eat them. Go ahead and poke an oyster and you should see it twitch. So the experience of eating live food shouldn't come across as new or different to anybody who has eaten oysters or clams on the half shell.

The most dramatic live dish I've had has been at Nobu in New York City, where they serve a live Florida spiny lobster. The head and body are separated from the tail. The tail meat is removed, cut into chunks, iced down and replaced in the tail cavity. The body and head are propped up on a platter. The whole thing is elaborately garnished and secured, and you eat the meat out of the tail-cavity serving vessel while the lobster watches you and flails around. It's disturbing, and delicious.

The live-food taboo, in the West at least, may come from the Bible. Genesis 9:4 says "But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat." This, and several other versions of the same phrase in other places in the Old Testament, is interpreted as a prohibition against eating the limb of a live animal.

[Peter Green]

The most dramatic live dish I've had has been at Nobu in New York City, where they serve a live Florida spiny lobster. The head and body are separated from the tail. The tail meat is removed, cut into chunks, iced down and replaced in the tail cavity. The body and head are propped up on a platter. The whole thing is elaborately garnished and secured, and you eat the meat out of the tail-cavity serving vessel while the lobster watches you and flails around. It's disturbing, and delicious.

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We've had something like that at Uomasa in Bangkok. Yoonhi and our friend found it somewhat unnerving to stare back into the eye as you were eating it.

[Carrot Top]

It seems like kindof fetishizing "freshness" to me /shrug.

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It could be seen that way, particularly in situations where the cultural histories are stripped out from underneath the act such as when the live fish is being served at "extreme" prices to people who are foreign to the concept of eating it - the whole act could be seen as that of an "acquisition" purchased with the focus being on the fact that one can afford to pay for this particular acquisition.

It would be my guess that originally, though, that part of the reason for eating things that are live and squiggling (squiggling in a way that oysters don't even when they are alive) *in* the cultures in which this occurs is that eating these things is not meant to be just about freshness or just about eating the food itself.

It is about eating in a way that affects not only the tastebuds and physical being but eating in a way that affects the emotional and philosophic being. When you face something alive, something that resembles "us" in the ways that it shows life, and face it down to then consume it while it is alive, something has to happen in that moment. In that moment, a question is in your face whether you ask it of yourself or not.

As Fat Guy said

It's disturbing, and delicious.

It makes us ask who we are.

There was a historic tribe who used to eat the bodies of their enemies after battle, with the greatest warriors of the winning tribe being allowed to eat the bodies of the greatest warriors of the other (losing) tribe. It was seen that the consuming of the bodies of their enemies would bring them their bravery and strength - it was a way of celebrating the win of the battle, giving honor to the enemy for their bravery, and then gaining that bravery in the eating all in one act.

Seems to me that dining upon live and squiggling things falls in this sort of tradition. If you can sit and eat another live thing, face it down and consume it, it is as much a philosophic battle as it is "dining". The inner self has been fed as well as the physical.

I can't imagine that this concept will become too wide-spread here in the US, though, in a land where mostly people like to see their meat and fish wrapped up in paper and plastic, far apart from looking as if it were ever "live". But I do think that it will be a part of the aspirational dining scene, and not just because of the cult of freshness.

[Shalmanese]

For those of you who've eaten it, did the live aspect make it actually taste better from an objective standpoint? If you were blindfolded, do you think you could tell the difference between live seafood and seafood that had been killed 6 hours ago?

[hummingbirdkiss]

For those of you who've eaten it, did the live aspect make it actually taste better from an objective standpoint? If you were blindfolded, do you think you could tell the difference between live seafood and seafood that had been killed 6 hours ago?

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no the "live" did not enhance the taste (except as Fatguy mentioned with clams and oysters I love those raw and alive so yes on that no on the crabs I ate)

and yes I could have told they were alive..the crabs ... with a blindfold...because they moved in my mouth!

[Malkavian]

Carrot top---thank you (seriously) for that very interesting reply. This thread initially reminded me of a video I saw on youtube a while back involving a sushi chef (is that the right term for a sushi maker?) filleting half a fish whilst alive and dropping the critter back in the tank for the next person--if not the same sort of fetish that I mentioned originally, then definitely sensationalism of some sort.

As far as the philosophical aspects, I think I see where you're coming from, but I'm afraid the point would be lost on me unless it was something I had harvested myself. (Pardon this short ramble, but since we're mostly talking about seafood here--) I have acquaintances that scuba dive and spearfish, and many have commented on the very quick, and very intense line of thought that one must go through immediately prior to throwing 3 feet of steel into a tuna that may be as old as i am. Some of them (I'd be included, if i ever get to be that caliber spearfisherman) indulge after in what could safely be called the freshest tuna sashimi possible.

There, in THAT moment, I'm asking myself who I am, and why am I really looking at this huge fish in the eye (or have crosshairs settled nicely on that deer, etc) If it's given to me on a plate...it's just different, at least to me.

Also just as an unrelated thought, we ARE mostly talking about either seafood or invertebrates. Is this sort of thing done with anything furry/feathered/scaly? I recall the penchant for drinking snakes' blood straight from the snake in southeast asia (which I deplore, but that's another subject and another long post) if no, why not?

[Fat Guy]

For those of you who've eaten it, did the live aspect make it actually taste better from an objective standpoint? If you were blindfolded, do you think you could tell the difference between live seafood and seafood that had been killed 6 hours ago?

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With shellfish, yes, you can tell the difference between live and killed hours ago -- not that you'd eat raw shellfish killed hours ago. The issue is that there's not much difference between killed a few minutes before you eat it, and eating it alive, flavor/texture-wise. With fin fish, I doubt I could tell blindfolded, but that's just because I'm ignorant. There is definitely a cycle of rigor mortis and decomposition that changes the texture of fish over the course of a few days. In some cases, such as with tuna, this curing is desirable. The other thing to note is that fish kept alive in tanks are not necessarily the best fish to eat. A lot of chefs will tell you they'd choose a killed-at-the-source, immediately-iced-down, express-shipped fish over one that has been living in a tank for days or weeks.

[sanrensho]

If you were blindfolded, do you think you could tell the difference between live seafood and seafood that had been killed 6 hours ago?

Yes, in that a raw shrimp that is peeled and killed moments ago is going to have different qualities compared with one that was peeled and has sat around for 6 hours. And I could feel the shrimp pulsing for a brief instant in my mouth.

[jean_genie]

For those of you who've eaten it, did the live aspect make it actually taste better from an objective standpoint? If you were blindfolded, do you think you could tell the difference between live seafood and seafood that had been killed 6 hours ago?

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Yep it does make a difference in sea snails. The raw sea snails I've had at sushi restaurants before and since the snorkelling trip (mentioned yesterday) all have a very strong and almost unpleasant taste. The live one I ate had a mild and nice fresh-seafood-y taste.