Introduction: Embracing EntomophagyA Meal Moth In Every Pantry, A Chinch Bug In Every Pot
Whats this book about? Eating bugs, of course. Within these pages is everything youll need to know about bug-based cuisine, plus an assortment of tantalizing bug dishes to tempt and, at times, terrify your family and friends.
By bugs, I mean all land-dwelling arthropods--insects, spiders, centipedes, millipedes, scorpions, and their kin--that can be caught (or otherwise acquired), cooked, and eaten. This definition may annoy some scientists who believe the word bug should apply only to members of the insect order Hemiptera, the so-called “true bugs.” Entomologically speaking, they may be right. But etymologically, they are probably missing the point.
Four hundred years ago, when people said “bug,” they meant a ghost or hobgoblin--you know, a bugaboo. They used the same word to describe the bed bug, another near-invisible spirit in the dark, which is, in fact, a hemipteran. Over time, the words meaning grew. Eventually bug was applied to all manner of small, cold-blooded critters--even flu germs and German-made automobiles.
Bug isnt always a bad word nowadays. Ive heard diners in New Orleans call an order of boiled crawfish a plateful of “bugs.” My friends who are scuba divers also use this term to describe the spiny lobster, a succulent second cousin to both crawfish and Dungeness crabs.
So, why not use the word bug to identify the lobsters edible relatives on dry land? With the single exception of the giant water bug, Belostoma, an inhabitant of freshwater bodies in North America and overseas, the bugs described in this book are all terrestrial by nature. Bugs were here many millions of years before us, and, some people say, theyll inherit the earth after were gone. So look elsewhere if youre seeking recipes for Shrimp Creole, Crab Louis, or Lobster Thermidore. But read on if youd like to learn how to make Crispy Crickets, Scorpion Scaloppini, and other unusually satisfying fare.
Who Eats Bugs?
Entomophagy (pronounced en-toe-moff-a-gee)--thats bug eating to you--has been practiced for many centuries throughout Africa, Asia, Australia, the Middle East, and North, South, and Central America. In other words, bugs are enjoyed nearly everywhere but Europe and the present-day United States.
Its hard to say what motivated some of our forefathers to refrain from this widespread and unquestionably wholesome practice. Quite possibly, our current disdain for bug cuisine was shared by the first farmers in the northern climes, who regarded most land arthropods, insects in particular, as crop- and livestock-robbing pests. To these folks, eating bugs was probably like sleeping with the enemy. To discourage anyone from going over to the other side, they manufactured all manner of bad press for bugs. Hundreds of years later, most people regard insects and other arthropods as germ-filled and foul-tasting--two views that have little, if any, real basis in fact.
Many of the worlds indigenous people still harvest and eat bugs, just like we would artichokes, oysters, or any of the myriad gifts from the land and sea. Did you know, for instance, that when faced with a cloud of locusts, native Algerians will break out the brooms and start sweeping their sudden bounty of insects into baskets and bags? Or that honey gatherers in Malaysia will sell the liquid bounty from a wild hive, but theyll save any larval bees still in the honeycomb for themselves? How many of you have heard about the mopane worm business in rural South Africa? The fat, juicy caterpillars of the emperor moth are plucked from the mopane trees at Christmastime, only to be gutted, dried, and sold at markets throughout the land.
The first people of North America were avid bug-eaters. Ive read that the Klamath tribe of southeastern Oregon lit fires beneath trees to smoke out the caterpillars of the pandora moth, which would then fall to the forest floor, where the Klamath harvested them for later consumption. One chief is said to have amassed a ton and a half of smoked, dried pandora caterpillars during the summer of 1920.
“I have seen the Cheyennes, Snakes, Utes, etc., eat vermin off each other by the fistful,” wrote the nineteenth-century chronicler Father Pierre-Jean de Smet. “Often great chiefs would pull off their shirts in my presence without ceremony, and while they chatted, would amuse themselves with carrying on this branch of the chase in the seams. As fast as they dislodged the game, they crunched it with as much relish as more civilized mouths crack almonds and hazel-nuts or the claws of crabs and crayfishes.”
Although entomophagy may have fallen from favor among the modern-day members of North Americas founding tribes, it thrives in the village markets of Oaxaca and a few other Mexican states. A favorite snack at these gathering places is pan-fried locusts, a traditional southwest Indian delicacy, the recipe for which has been handed down from one generation to the next. The legacy of bug eating is also alive in the heart of Mexico City, where gourmet restaurants still offer Cazuela de Escamoles a la bilbaina--larval red ants, fried in olive oil and dry red chile--to their discerning clientele.
The Benefits of Bug-Eating
Whats to be gained from a diet of bugs? Im glad you asked, since Ive been collecting data on this topic for several years. A grasshoppers body is more than 20 percent protein. Compare this with the protein in lean ground beef (about 27 percent), and youll see why even professional wrestlers could get by on a diet of food arthropods. Since grasshoppers and their insect relatives contain large quantities of water, their protein content jumps to around 60 percent after these animals are dried.
Many protein-rich bugs are also good sources of vitamins, minerals, and fats. Crickets are loaded with calcium, and termites are rich in iron. One hundred grams of giant silkworm moth larvae provide 100 percent of the daily requirements for copper, zinc, iron, thiamin, and riboflavin. Grubs of the sago palm weevil (a staple in Papua New Guinea) are laden with unsaturated fat. Many insects contain abundant stores of lysine, an amino acid deficient in the diets of many people who depend heavily on grain.
Bug-eating is good for the planet, too. Raising cows, pigs, and sheep is a tremendous waste of the planets resources, but bug ranching is pretty benign. It all comes down to what food-scientists call the efficiency of conversion of ingested food, a way of rating how metabolically thrifty different kinds of animals are. ECI ratings are derived by measuring the weight that an animal gains from eating an established weight of food. Chickens, which produce 38 to 40 pounds of meat from 100 pounds of feed, get a fairly high ECI rating--around 38 or 40. By comparison, beef cattle and sheep are real losers, producing ECI values of 10 and 5.3 respectively. Another way of looking at this: 90 percent of a steers diet and 95 percent of a sheeps is wasted, at least from the meat consumers perspective. No wonder such vast tracts of land and deep reservoirs of water must be devoted to sheep and cattle ranching.
Comparatively food- and water-efficient livestock such as chickens or hogs (ECI value: 17 to 20) also have drawbacks. Operations to raise both animals have the potential for generating large quantities of waste, which, if managed improperly, can pollute rivers and lakes, degrading our water supplies. Even worse are the large volumes of methane gas that emanate from these facilities and from raising cattle and sheep. This by-product of large-scale livestock production has been directly linked to global warming--an effect that could have serious consequences for all life on the planet.
Accurate ECI values for insects are difficult to obtain. However, the ratings we do have are certainly respectable: 19 to 31 for silkworm caterpillars, 16 to 37 for the pale western cutworm, and up to 44 for German cockroaches. In addition, few, if any, harmful effects (aside from complaints from ones neighbors) are associated with the commercial rearing of these arthropods for food.
And consider this: Many of our common garden pests are edible. If everyone served rapacious critters such as vine weevils (page 73) and tomato hornworms (page 69) at the dinner table, wed have little need for most over-the-counter pesticide powders and sprays. On a global scale, this could make an incredible difference in environmental and human health.
Shouldnt Everyone Eat Bugs?
In his persuasively written Why Not Eat Insects?, published in 1885, Vincent M. Holt argued that Englands starving peasantry would be better fed if they rejected cattle, pigs, and the rest of barnyard life and embraced caterpillars, beetles and other cold-blooded creatures of forest and field. “People,” he wrote, “will enjoy oysters and cockles, while they abominate snails; they will make themselves ill with indigestible and foul-feeding lobsters while they look with horror upon pretty, clean-feeding caterpillars.”
The rich could afford to be dainty, observed Holt. But it was everyones moral obligation to end the suffering of starving laborers by encouraging them to partake of an overlooked and abundant food supply--the bugs of the British Isles.
Holt focused attention on an assortment of arthropods, all of which were “vegetable feeders, clean, palatable, wholesome and decidedly more particular in their feeding than ourselves.” He presented two sample menus, each for an eight-course dinner almost entirely derived from locally collected invertebrate fauna.
Far from suggesting simple working-class fare, Holt listed Larves de Hanneton Grillées (Deviled Cockchafer Grubs) and Fricassee de Poulets aux Chrysalides (Boiled Neck of Mutton with Wireworm Sauce) as suitable entrées for his peers. Alas, no formal recipes for these delicacies were included in his book. However, we fortunate readers were given detailed instructions for preparing at least one item, a sort of wood-louse white sauce:
Collect a quantity of the finest wood-lice to be found (no difficult task, as they swarm under the bark of every rotten tree), and drop them into boiling water, which will kill them instantly, but not turn them red, as might be expected. At the same time put into a saucepan a quarter pound of fresh butter, a teaspoonful of flour, a small glass of water, a little milk, some pepper and salt, and place it on the stove. As soon as the sauce is thick, take it off and put in the wood-lice. This is an excellent sauce for fish. Try it.
The English entomophage (thats a gourmet bug chef, for those of you in the cheap seats) did everything in his power to convince people that edible insects were where its at. More than a hundred years after its publication, Holts book is considered an underground classic. Nonetheless, it has failed to change the eating habits of the Brits, much to the disappointment of foreign visitors to the United Kingdom, who still must endure some of the blandest cuisine known to mankind.
More recently, Holts cause has gained momentum, thanks in large part to Ronald L. Taylor, the author of what can best be described as the bug-eaters bible, a scholarly 224-page book with a truly inspired title--Butterflies in My Stomach. For at least a decade after its release in the 1970s, this book (and its slim companion volume Entertaining with Insects, co-written by Taylor and one of his students, Barbara Carter) was the only readily available source of information on bug eating for like-minded epicures. Twenty years after the fact, youll still find ample reference to these books in magazines, academic texts and even on the Internet.
It wasnt until the Food Insects Newsletter arrived on the scene that the cause of entomophagy moved forward once more. This quarterly journal is now edited by Florence Dunkel, a professor of entomology at Montana State University, and provides a lively forum for bug eaters from all walks of life. Information on the newsletter and Taylors two books is contained in the resources section of this cookbook.
Throughout the 1990s, peoples attitudes about bugs have changed. On the whole, weve become more appreciative of the entire animal kingdom, not just what we biologists call charismatic megafauna-crowd-pleasing animals like lions and tigers, eagles and penguins, dolphins and whales. This new interest in small wonders has inspired many zoos and museums to add insect festivals and bug fairs to their yearly calendars of events. Highlights of these well-attended public programs often include displays of edible insects, usually with opportunities for fair-goers to sample an assortment of dishes made from bugs (a listing of such events is also contained in this books resources section). As a result, more people each year are sharing the joy of bug-based cuisine. And more often I find myself asking family and friends, “Have you eaten your share of bugs--about 200 million for every person alive--today?”
Government-Approved Entomophagy
Few Americans realize theyre already eating bugs on a daily basis. Entomophagy is officially sanctioned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has established permissible degrees of insect damage and infestation (thats right, the allowable number of eggs, immature and adult insects, or their parts) for various foods.
The FDA recognizes its nearly impossible to keep tiny insects out of items such as spinach, cornmeal, and dried beans, so theyve established standards, more for aesthetics than for reasons of public health. And theyve hired inspectors, arming them with ultra-high-powered microscopes with which to search for the minute signs of tampering by the six-legged set.
Its OK, from the governments perspective, if there are up to sixty aphids in 31/2 ounces of frozen broccoli, perfectly fine if there are two or three fruit fly maggots in 200 grams of tomato juice. As many as 100 insect fragments are allowed in 25 grams of curry powder, 74 mites in 100 grams of canned mushrooms, 13 or more insect heads in 100 grams of fig paste, and 34 fruit fly eggs in every cup of raisins.
How do I know all this? Simple: I requested a copy of Food Defect Action Levels from the FDAs Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. All the information is there in black and white in this nifty reports many tables and graphs. But dont get me wrong, Im not shocked by all this data. From a bug eaters standpoint, Im happy to be getting more vitamins, minerals, and protein from so many of my store-bought staples.
About the Recipes
Hypothetically, any dish with a food arthropod in it qualifies as eat-a-bug cuisine, but this does not mean you can get away with throwing insects into everyday fare. As with all ingredients, the bugs in a recipe must serve a purpose--by satisfying our appetites, adding a flavor or texture, or enhancing the visual appeal (or shock appeal) of a dish. In turn, recipes for bug-based comestibles must be artfully concocted so the once-living ingredients can bring their special gifts to the table, ensuring a memorable (and I mean this in a positive way) meal.
Many of the recipes in this book were inspired by the culinary traditions of entomophagous societies--the Dayak of northern Borneo, Yanomamo of Brazil, South African Pedi, and the Shoshone of Wyoming, to name just a few. Several other recipes can be traced to less esoteric but almost as exotic sources, such as La Cava del Leon restaurant in the state of Sonora, Mexico, and the pharmaceutical shops of Vancouvers Chinatown. A pair of recipes are from the New York Entomological Societys Centennial Banquet, undoubtedly the most lavish insect-eating affair in the history of the Western world. A bunch of these dishes (among them, Gregor Samsas Samosas) have sprung from my overly fertile imagination.
I prefer to give top billing to the insect ingredients in my recipes, unlike some arthropod chefs, who try to conceal the bugs in their dishes. Their recipes usually involve grinding the bodies of oven-dried insects into flour or selecting bugs that are so tiny that they are easily overlooked by diners.
The bugs in my recipes look good: They are visual as well as gastronomic delights. Most are brightly colored and handsomely proportioned (a few are downright fetching), so why hide them, or worse yet, bury them beneath boringly familiar ingredients? Its much better, I find, to give the bugs prominence, artfully placing them atop a main dish or floating them at the surface of a tureen of soup. Do you think Martha Stewart would approve of my use of bug bodies and parts, along with forest greenery and fresh flowers, as garnish?
Of course, dining on dragonflies is hardly the same as digging into a T-bone steak. Dishes featuring food arthropods fall under the heading of nouvelle cuisine, defined in my handy Food Lovers Companion as “fresher, lighter food served in small portions.” Entrées such as Water Bugs and Watercress should not be served alone; rather each main dish should be accompanied (or preceded) by an assortment of salads and side dishes, some with bugs and others without, to round out the mealtime experience.