A few years ago I served on the Board of a corporation headquartered
about 100 km from Shanghai. Several times I had dinner at a rather
elegant restaurant (well, rather elegant for that part of the world) where
one of the specialties was live fishes. They were brought to the table
live, and one had the choice of dipping them into boiling highly seasoned
broth or boiling oil. While they certainly were tasty, dipping the wriggling
creatures into a boiling cauldron was a bit of a turn-off. For me, at least.
On my last visit, I asked the waiter if I could take a couple of the fishes
with me, and of course the restaurant obliged by putting them into a
small styrofoam container of water - about 1 - 1= liter, I estimate.
A few days later I flew from Shanghai to Narita (Tokyo) to Los Angeles,
carrying the container of fishes with me all the way home. I had a bit of
a "conversation" with the nice customs people at LAX, but managed to
convince them the fishes were not on the proscribed list - birds, feathers,
live animals, meat, seeds, etc. (!) They survived for a couple of years
in a 10 gal. aquarium here in Santa Barbara, but finally expired. They
sure were an interesting curiosity while I had them. From the photos
I've seen of snakeheads...and those at
http://nas.er.usgs.gov/fishes/accounts/channida/ch_stria.html...
I suspect they were either C. striatta or a closely related species.
Bob Sinclair
Santa Barbara CA
* * * * *
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 07:01:56 -0700 (PDT)
From: Sajjad Lateef <sajjadlateef_at_yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: NANFA-- NYTimes - now snakehead...yet again!
Anyone know if these snakeheads were Channa murrel
(the striated snakehead)?
I've eaten C. murrel in India. They are considered
a delicacy and are expensive.
=====
- --
Sajjad Lateef
sajjad_at_acm.org
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