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.

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.

Food for Thought: An impressive success

This was a big event for SLS. I was in the company of some of the best-known restaurants in Providence – a town where people like their restaurants. The setting (the newly-expanded Botanical Gardens at Roger Williams Park) was lovely, and the guests seemingly better-heeled than myself. I still hope to get some pictures of the actual event; but first, a couple images of the preparations.






The most labor-intensive prep was ‘filleting’ the Giant Water Bugs. We [I got a lot of help from the staff and students at the Genesis Center) did 175 of them. I thought a good deal about what the professional crab-pickers did with those world-famous Chesapeake Bay Blue Crabs.











This is the empty square. The Six-and-five-eighths ounces of empty weight is equivalent to 188g.

Later, filled with the meat of the 175 insects, the one-pound-and-three ounces equaled 540g. Close perusal will reveal two kinds of tissue; the darker and more-square pieces are from the thorax of the animals, and might just correspond to pectoral muscle(?). The lighter-colored stuff is more connective rather than central. If that makes any sense. Seeing the inside of the insect would be helpful; I'll try to get some good macro shots of that this winter.

Here are the shells. The weight was 2 pounds and 11 oz. I don’t have the metric equivalent but it doesn’t really matter since this mound does not represent all 175 of the insects; some were discarded and could not be retrieved. I tried to boil the shells so as to get a stock but they proved far too salty to work with.



And Here Is The Finished Product!:










[Photo by David Winthrop]

The first name we gave it -- we being myself and Chef Branden Lewis of the Genesis Center, who was wonderful to collaborate with -- was Sour Candy Canape. This name reflected the fact that the bug's meat is reminiscent of sour candy, especially for example Jolly Rancher. But this first name morphed into WaterBugaMelon, since Branden wanted to be more clear about the fact that the dish contained insect protein material.

Traditionally, some people salt their watermelon in the summer. The saltiness-yet-fruitiness of the meat paired well with the fruits. The cocktail umbrella is for decoration only.

Then there were the crickets, which were good also although the planned dish didn't quite get off the ground. The intention was to 'honey-roast' them and serve with popcorn. We were to call it "Popcrick," and maybe next October we'll get it nailed down. Here they are on the roasting pan

and yeah, they were tasty; the sugar didn't overwhelm the nuttiness of the crickets themselves. But we had some problems with the popcorn maker, and in the end I'll need a real honey roaster, which I've seen at carnivals and suchlife venues but I haven't found something affordable that could fit the need.

I was too busy that evening to take pictures of the diners, but I may be able to track down some images one of these days. My tables were quite busy, though, and the even raised my company profile here in Providence, as well as started me off with a really nice collaboration with The Genesis Center, which is a great place.

I'll be serving the bugs at the next Food For Thought in October 2008.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT (and some other subjects)

My life has been too hectified for me to have covered this earlier: I'm very proud and happy to be involved in The Genesis Center's event on October 25th at the relatively-newly-expanded Botanical Center at Roger Williams Park. It looks pretty spectacular -- more than 25 of Providence's best restaurants (and ours is a city known for its food) and me. The cuisines will reflect the great diversity of the city, and that's part of the origin of the name: Food For Thought. This will mark the 11th year of the event; more information here.

I plan to have some pictures of the event: as it happens I've got three events before it coming up: Syracuse in a few days -- the 29th -- and then Central Square, Cambridge, on the 13th, and then Oak Knoll Audubon Center's Spooktacular on the 20th.