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Bikram Vohra
JournalismPakistan.com
August 24, 2014
You have heard of the phrase ‘snakes alive.’ It just got a whole new meaning.
Well known Chinese chef Peng Fan from Foshan, Guangdong province, southern China, had been preparing a special dish made from the Indochinese spitting cobra, a rare delicacy. He had cut off the head 20 minutes earlier and flung it into the trash. That is the body part which contains the venom but reptiles can survive for as long as 60 minutes even after they have been decapitated and cut into pieces.
Why do they take the risk? The same sort of danger lurks in the famous Japanese pufferfish called Fugu… it has to be cut just so right as to remove the sac which contains lethal toxin and if it goes wrong well, leave the fish and cash in your chips.
It was as he went to chuck the cobra’s head in the bin that it bit him, injecting Mr Peng with its flesh-killing, neurotoxic venom. The length of the snake was being diced up to be made into snake soup, a much sought after dish in the province’s high-end restaurants.
Without realizing it the chef placed his hand near the bin to throw something else in and the dying snake’s head bit him, injecting the dose of poison. Before help could arrive or an antidote be injected he died.
‘We did not know what was happening but could hear screams coming from the kitchen,’ said one diner. Out of respect, everyone who had come for dinner, called it a day.
(The writer is a Senior Editorial Advisor of Khaleej Times and the paper’s former Editor. He has also been the Editor of Gulf News, Gulf Today, Emirates Today and Bahrain Tribune)
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