Friday, 17 February 2012
Question of the Week
Is honey the only thing that humans eat that is produced by insects or, indeed, has anything to do with them? I suppose that's a question that is very much a product of the culture I come from - I know that some strange exotic population somewhere in the world eats grilled grasshoppers or something, but I think they only do that because they haven't got meat pies or Chiko rolls, whereas honey is eaten because we genuinely think it is delicious.
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I don't want to put you off, but there are recipes online for grasshopper crispies, some with honey, so you can have both if you like.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.faculty.de.gcsu.edu/~cbader/ghprecwithinsects.html
Another delicacy is fried maggots, which are very tasty with condiments. So I'm told.
But that's not quite what you were on about. I'm sure if you stroked an aphid, like ants do when they farm them, you could also have a sweet little treat.
Apparantly the whole ghastly business even has a proper Latin name and everything: Entomophagy.
ReplyDeleteThat Wikipedia article is FASCINATING and also pretty disgusting. I think the Sicilian cheese deserves its veyr own blog post.
DeleteThe grasshoppers I've eaten weren't bad, crackly, faintly salty, like mild chips. But the most pointless invertebrate I've ever tried was a kind of transparent mangrove worm. It looks like a thread of jellied glass with a smaller black thread running down the centre and this black thread is mud. You run your fingers along the body first, to squeeze out that mud, and there's always a few grains left behind, so, crunch, you go, crunch. It's like eating a sandwich on the beach without the sandwich.
ReplyDeleteI wish you didn't describe things quite so well.
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