House Fly Pupae: Surprisingly Good

About two weeks ago I offered four folks from RISD a special banquet. This was in a private home and the participants had a great time. I offered about a dozen varieties of insects, some of which I'd never served before. There was the impressive-yet-usual:

Giant Water Bugs [Lethocerus indicus, which for some reason I've barely mentioned in this blog]. I call them 'usual' because they're one of the insects more-or-less easily available in Asian markets in Providence. Though I've seen them served whole-fried in Thailand (I found myself unable to masticate them much at all, I guess my mouth is too tender), I serve them filleted; taking out the muscle tissue in the thorax. Most people are pretty blown away by the taste of it, but some folks just purely hate it.


and the unusual:
Thorny Stick Insects [Eurycantha horridum], which unfortunately are not all that good after all. Not much to eat on them, but they're much appreciated and enjoyed in Papua New Guinea, where they're stuck on a stick and roasted over the fire.


And there was one item that I myself had never tried: house fly pupae.

I'd gotten them last fall, through the kindness of folks at Cornell's Ag department -- thanks again, Allie!! I can admit now that I had a bit of a hang up about trying them, which had surprised and disappointed me. After all, I was supposed to be beyond having such issues. The problem I had was that when I picked them up in the insectary, I smelled what they'd been eating -- a mixture of milk and really rich calf feed, I think -- and saw the dried bits of that mixture among the pupae; I didn't enjoy the prospect of separating them.

Between the smell and the prospect of having to sort through the pupae themselves [the tiny red pills] and fish out the bits of their food [the vague nuggets], I wasn't eager. But at last I realized the simple solution there in front of me all along. If I would just parboil the pupae, as I did the crickets as part of their processing, the nuggets would melt away; such smell as there might be would dissipate as well; and then I could pan-fry the pupae and serve.

And it worked fine! Unfortunately I was too distracted to get an image of the final result, so once again my patient readers will have to take my word for it -- until such time, at least, as they can sample such cuisine for themselves. The pupae have a little bit of crunch from the very thin shells. The flavor is rich with a hint of iron, sort of like blood pudding. All other things being equal (meaning, if the idea of it wasn't particularly disgusting to so many people) I think there could be great potential for mass-rearing them and processing the pupae into either a flour or "hamburger helper" kind of protein ingredient.

I'm very happy to have gotten over my hang-up about this food. As always, I'm not describing all of this to gross anyone out. It's a food like any other, it wasn't raised on dead meat or on the side of the road, and therefore it's just like any other kind of entomophagy: a matter of triumphing over that bad ol' cultural conditioning.

Cool new acquisition: Nsenene!

A couple days ago I drove about an hour and bought nine bags of African grasshoppers.
I’d learned in October that a Ugandan community gets a shipment of grasshoppers in December. I knew that I'd want some of them, but I didn’t want to drive all that way for nothing. Since I’d lost the business card from my first visit, it was time for some internet research to find the right number to confirm that the product was available. As usual the calls were circuitous, amusing, and ultimately successful.

I was told the price-per-bag but not the size or weight of a bag; this made the information meaningless. I wondered what the unit price, per-pound or kilo, would be. I figured that since the immigrant community was probably not very wealthy, the item would not be very expensive. Yet the product arrived only once or twice a year, and I was pretty sure that it had a lot of sentimental value as a taste of the homeland.

I arrived in the city and achieved my goal within 15 minutes. The bags were disappointingly small. I spent roughly the sum I'd planned to, but the amount of product was miniscule. I’m not sharing how much I spent, since it’s already easy for people to decide that I’m crazy. Some would say I’m making a big deal out of a modest amount of money, while others would be amazed at how much I spent. The little bags make a pleasant pile on the kitchen table.

Don’t they look like shrimp?

The important part is to find out what insects taste like, and in the bigger picture to understand how people can feed themselves within harmony with nature. I’m getting a taste of a market in Kampala. I’m increasing my stock-in-trade.

They’re called Nsenene, which I suspect is onomatopoeic in origin. Since pronunciation counts: say “NnnnnnSEH-neh-nay.” The word is spoken quickly, as though the syllables are running out of your mouth.

Googling the name, I found several helpful sites, mostly blogs of those who’d had Ugandan experiences. All described how the insects are caught and processed: legs and wings are removed. Few of the sites included a binomial, and most that did listed Ruspolia nitidula. I was/am curious to know if there's something similar here in the U.S.. When I checked Bugguide I found the genus Neoconocephalus, which features several very similar looking species. I figured out two useful things: first, nsenene are katydids, not grasshoppers. This is good to know. Second, it's the mass movements of nsenene that makes for relatively easy harvesting during the season; this is not the case for the American version of this kind of katydid. But there's always the Mormon cricket, a species of large, flightless katydid in the American West. They were routinely mass-harvested by American Indians. But since nsenene are so tasty, I'm wondering if they -- or something just like them -- could be farmed...

When I cooked a few [or simply warmed them, actually, on aluminum foil in the toaster-oven] they turned a reddish golden-brown.

Two friends had come by and were up for a tasting, though they were a bit hesitant:

Of course I had one myself, though I didn't get around to shooting that. All of us proclaimed them very tasty indeed. They’re surprisingly buttery on their own, and taste like a cross between chicken, shrimp, and croutons.

And there’s some other intriguing developments [which as you loyal and patient readers will know by now is nothing new.]

I’m speaking with the great and noble Steven of Louisiana about the potential for starting an insect-rearing facility in his area.
I’ve contacted a researcher in stinkbug propagation, and it might be possible for me to get a supply of these insects.
I’m hard at work on the reprinting of the Food Insects Newsletter. Right now I’m constructing the various indices, which is less fun than when I'd started.

Big Ants 2008!

It's True. The Great Penny came through for the second year in a row!! Her weekend off from work coincided with a thunderstorm or two in Southern Texas, and she was able to gather a mess of queen leaf-cutter ants. In fact she included [on her livejournal] a description of what she had to do in order to get them, and I'm most grateful.

The difference between last year and this one is that she's gotten a little tired of waiting for me to send her some 'authentic' Colombian-prepared ants, and decided to throw an ant-tasting party of her own. I'll still send her some of the pre-packaged sort, really I will, but it's fantastic that she and her friends went ahead and ate their own.

Have a look for yourselves:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/doubledutch/

This is just the kind of thing I'd like to see others doing. These good people found out that yes, insects can be very tasty. It's time that others learned the same.
I'll let you all know when the ants arrive.

Thailand II

The first insects I had eaten were in the evening market on Sunday, the first day I'd gotten into CM. The mixed bag was about 60 cents U.S. and contained six kinds of insect. They were all pretty good, but a few kinds were delicious.

I'd bought them at this table; there was only one such vendor at the market that late afternoon.



I'm aware that pictures like this are kind of a tacky standard subject for foreign tourists, and I felt a little strange shooting away like this, just as if I was some gawker. But I tried each kind of insect and then bought a second bag for later, and some of these were very tasty. For my money, the best of all were the BIG grasshoppers.


The conference,

Edible Forest Insects: Humans Bite Back

took place on a Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday. Presentations took up the first day, and that evening there was a banquet of sorts. The main courses were beef, pork, chicken, and fish; before these dishes were many insects. I tried all of them.

The Bamboo Caterpillars

and grasshoppers were among the best. Unlike most of the other conference-attendees, I tried all of the insects on offer, though several of them weren't fantastic:

Of these, the ones in the lower right quadrant -- the bedraggled sphinx moth, the rhinoceros beetle, and the longhorn beetle cut off by the edge of the image -- were pretty bad. The Giant Water Bug also was disappointing. But the large crickets (genus Brachytrupes) in the upper right area, and the house crickets on the left side of the plate, were quite good, as were the two varieties specified already. After finishing the great majority of this plate I will admit that I was ready for the vertebrate selections that evening.

The second day consisted of a driving tour full of stops related to the development of insects in one application or another, but mostly as foods. We went to an insect zoo; a cricket farm; a bee farm; and another market -- where I sampled some deep-fried scorpion.

One of the 39 cricket pits housed in an unwalled area the size of a four-car garage -- a concrete circle a meter across and half as high. It's a self-contained cricket utopia (except for the part about being harvested as food, but then the crickets themselves never know about that part). There's plenty of hiding places, food [chicken feed], and water [two plastic water-bottles laid on their sides, with paper towels out of the holes punched to let the capillary action draw the moisture up for the insects to drink -- brilliant in its simplicity!] There's even a handy laying-tray with the right kind of substrate: coconut husks and potting soil. The eggs can hatch in a new pit and thereby start off the next generation. Seven weeks later, harvest time.

The scorpion (Heterometrus spinifer, looks a lot like the emperor scorpion that's a somewhat-popular pet choice among certain circles here in the U.S.) didn't have a lot of real flavor, but the texture of the exoskeleton was unique, and a fairly pleasant eating experience. But it was hardly as much fun to eat as some already mentioned items.

The last day included some papers (including mine, which went pretty well) and group meetings.

Afterward I hit the night-markets, as I'd done several times by then. The next two days were spent with new friends on a driving tour -- we drove Northwest-ish from Chiang Mai towards Myanmar, and stayed at the Cave Lodge. It was amazing: a large cave with thorough tours, a five-minute walk from the Lodge.


Best of all: after the tour, we lay ourselves on the dry riverbed and watched the hundreds of thousands of cave swifts speeding through the evening air, back to their perches in the cave. Spectacular!! The shots I took didn't do them justice, but a charming Montrealean named Madga sent me some video she had shot. If anyone just has to see it, let me know and I'll try to send it to you.

Too soon I had to return to Chiang Mai and fly home, to Bangkok, where I wasn't able to see a thing because I didn't plan it into this trip; then Tokyo, where I had sushi in the airport; and back to Chicago, Boston, then home at last to modest, cozy Providence. I'm looking forward to my next trip to Thailand; we'll have to see how soon I'll be able to go.

Chapulines On The Menu!!

Wow. What a great way to start the month.

Today I dropped off a half-pound of the tiny chapulines at TWO popular restaurants here in Providence. I won't say which ones just yet, other than one of them is a Mexican place and one serves hipsters and artist-types. In a little while I'll ask them if I can include their names in this blog; what matters for the moment is that these adventurous people had taken samples from me and decided that it was time to play with a new ingredient.

In fact I'd made one or two previous small-scale sales before these, from that larger order I'd picked up last month. I know that there are other restaurants out there also willing to take the plunge, and I'll be selling frozen/chilled insects at a few of my up-coming events.

Thus the whole thing grows....

ANOTHER new edible insect in the mail! The Big Ants

I've been sitting on this pretty amazing news for a little while now, getting ready to blog it, as the kids say. First I’d gotten the chapulines (picked up another 4.5 pounds from the Mexican market just today), then the cicadas, and then these big ants. By the Fall I hope to receive two or three other kinds of insects.

I’d contacted a member of http://www.bugguide.net/, a pretty cool group that posts images of North American insects and other arthropods; identifies the species, collates geographical information, etc, etc. My contact lives in Texas and had posted images of leaf-cutter ants – specifically the alates, meaning the winged reproductives that some types of colony-living insects send out at specific times. In this case that would be, more or less, in the second half of May.

These ants [in the genus Atta] are cherished delicacies in Colombia and other places between there and the U.S. Were it not for concerns about slowing down these posts with lots of extra text I’d cite some intriguing stuff about the Spaniards, when they arrived in what became Colombia, scorning the local caviar, as it was thought of, only to attempt seizing control of the ant colonies once they got a taste for the insects. This decision provoked an uprising from the natives. Those interested in reading this for themselves can find it here.

Though at first that Texas connection wrote that -- had missed the brief emergence-time of those winged queen ants, word later came that -- had been successful after all! Very exciting news.

At length the large box arrived [note my foot for scale, and that I've cleverly obscured the sender's address on the shipping document]

inside was a Styrofoam cooler,

and inside that was OVER TWO POUNDS of ants.

They’re beautiful, impressive insects.

The real question, though: how do they taste? The morning after I got them I laid a few down on a hot iron skillet. I tried both winged and wing-free individuals; unlike those of the cicadas, these wings really did get in the way. The flavor is very nice; surprisingly mild.

I’ve tried these ants before – pre-packaged [and quite expensive.] The flavor is very intense, almost harsh. I’ve heard that fresh off the vendor’s cart in Colombia they’re heavenly (and, again, quite expensive). The ants are still enjoyed today, and are called “hormigas culonas,” or ‘big-bottom ants’ due to their impressive abdomens.

Given that I've greatly enjoyed these ants in other settings, I'm pretty certain that I can make them taste even better.

This item is just the kind of thing that those few discerning customers ask for; the ones who want more from life than the standard crickets and mealworms. When this happens I'm ready.

Also worth mentioning: I've seen one or two websites centered on the harvest and preparation of these ants in Colombia. Not altogether surprisingly, these sites are in Spanish, which I cannot translate. So getting some help with that would be great...

On the other side of the plate are the mopani worms; they shall have their own substantial post at some point.... Boy, would I love to get a source of those!!

As for the Texan ants: my source mentioned having some ideas for, hopefully, an even bigger harvest next Spring.

Summer of New Bugs: The Chapulines

Chapulines are the name for "Grasshoppers" in Mexico, where they are a pretty popular kind of food -- the most popular insect food, though there are several other insects consumed there as well. This part of the story of my business starts with Chapulines because they came first chronologically. I've got two varieties now; the larger ones are from the state of Morelos, and I got them last October. Unfortunately the source is pretty much non-renewable, though I have some hope that I can get more of them. They're dry and crunchy and really good.

The second kind I got more recently; the first batch was almost a month ago. They're from Oaxaca -- the next state over from Morelos and the part where chapulines are best-known and most popular throughout Mexico. I'd learned that YES, there is legal importation of Mexican grasshoppers from Mexico -- they're exported to just a few places, including a town about 40 minutes from where I grew up. So I called up the store, and on my way to visit Mom I dropped by to pick up their last pound of 'hoppers, which they had put aside for me.

A variety of grasshoppers are collected and sold in Oaxaca, and in fact these insects seem to be culturally notable (there's a saying that goes something like, "Those who taste the Chapulines will always return to Oaxaca") but they seem to be known for the little tiny ones not much bigger than rice grains, which is what the market in NY sells:

In the basket or plate, these little ones have the appearence of shredded dried beef (though, granted, when you examine them up close, they look rather insect-like). In the mouth they're somehow both meaty and crunchy. They're sold cold and damp, whereas the larger ones are as dry as crackers. They're also considerably spicier than the larger ones. I have plans to buy a good deal more of the second variety, since I hope to have customers. In fact I've introduced this very tasty food to two restaurants in Providence (they haven't quite committed yet, but the proprietors are quite intrigued, so... fingers crossed!)