Monday 20 February 2012

Yikes

Gadjo Dilo, the sage of Kolozsvar responded to my question of the week with a link to a Wikipedia article about Entomophagy, which is, apparently, the word for the eating of insects and insect products. It was fascinating in a  gruesome way, especially the bit about Sicilian cheese:

"Within Western culture, entomophagy (barring some food dyes) is seen as taboo.[34] There are some exceptions. Casu marzu, for example, also called casu modde, casu cundhídu, or in Italian formaggio marcio, is a cheese made in Sardinia notable for being riddled with live insect larvae. Casu marzu means "rotten cheese" in Sardinian and is known colloquially as maggot cheese."


My question of this week is now: can Casu marzu be included in a vegetarian diet. No, maybe my question of this week is actually: why would anyone want to eat Casu marzu??

6 comments:

  1. Thanks for linking to me, zedders, even though I don't have time to blog any more. There seem to be insects hiding in almost everything: I seem to remember that leaving even a humble cheese sandwich in a moist environment for a few weeks will see it hatching a veritable swarm of lavae, which presumably would eventually grow up into majestic butterflies or boll weevils or something. So maybe eating Casu marzu is just like eating regular cheese, though it's probably better to keep your eyes closed.

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    1. Surely if you left anything in a moist environment for a few weeks it would hatch all sorts of things though? But presumably they'd have landed on it after you'd put it down, rather than being integral to it, before you put it down? I'm going to assume so, otherwise I'll be unable to eat anything from here on in.

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  2. Hmm, well, I dunno. My only 'research' in this area involved leaving the aforementioned cheese sandwich in a pocket of my rucksack for a couple of weeks, but STILL IN THE SEALED PLASTIC BOX which it had been in since I first bought it from the shop. I don't know what conclusions you waqnt to draw from this - maybe it's best just to forget about it :-)

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  3. The conclusion I would draw is don't buy sandwiches that come in sealed plastic boxes. I'm reeling from the news that such racy commodities are available in Kolozsvar.

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  4. Ah, no, that was back in Englad, and I don't EVER buy ANYTHING in sealed plastic containers any more, except if said sealed plastic container looks like it could be reused later on for some other purpose.

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    1. Thank heavens, that answer is reassuring on so many levels. Although I hope the food shopping possibilities, despite lacking sealed plastic containers, are not quite as limited as when we were there under Mr Ceaucescu. Boy, was it grim back then.

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