Deep fried grasshoppers and bamboo worms
Thanks to the success of shows like Fear Factor, Survivor and Bizarre Foods, the consumption of bugs has entered the mainstream in a way few observers of the culinary scene might have expected. There is a long tradition of bug-eating – very little of which is found in the United States. Indeed, the rest of the world eats so many bugs, that author Jerry Hopkins, in his remarkable (and remarkably illustrated) book Strange Foods (Tuttle, 1999), breaks down his section on insect eating into seven chapters – "Grasshoppers," "Ants and Termites," "Spiders and Scorpions," "Beetles," "Crickets and Cicadas," "Butterflies and Moths" and "Flies."
He observes that, "Of the more than 800,000 species described by entomologists, thousands play a role in the human diet..." And those entomologists don't just give the consumption of bugs lip service (as it were). They put their bugs where their, ahem, mouths are. Every March, The Explorers Club (in coordination with the New York Entomological Society) throws a gala banquet at the Waldorf-Astoria (open to members and their guests only), where the menu has included such savories as Crudités with Peppery Delight Mealworm Dip, Waxworm and Mealworm California Roll, Cricket Tempura, Worm and Corn Fritters, and tasty Chocolate Cricket Torte. The sort of food that entomologically-inclined explorers would enjoy.
Actually, it’s been estimated that the average human beings inadvertently consumes more than a pound of bugs in their lifetime. This includes the flour beetles, weevils and other pests that are milled along with our grain; and a surprising number of insects that wind up in processed items like apple cider and apple sauce.
The eating of insects is technically known as entophagy. And not only have we all chewed on a critter at one time or another, we've done it rather happily and quite healthily. Just consider: 100 g. of cricket contains 121 calories (versus 288 calories for ground beef) and 5.5 grams of fat (versus 21 grams for ground beef). Crickets are a good source of protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, thiamin, riboflavin and niacin. And here's the twist – they even taste pretty good. Heck, they're no stranger than shrimp, lobster and crab. And they're a lot less peculiar than snails. One of the great mysteries of our culinary history is why shrimp are a delicacy and locusts are a yuck.
All of which has, no doubt, left you salivating for a nice platter of mealworms en croute. Which isn't served locally. But other bugs are. And not surprisingly, they're offered at some of our most unusual restaurants. Those who hunger for crickets served in the style of Oaxaca (where they're sold like bags of peanuts at a Dodger game by street vendors in and around the Mercado), can find them at a wonderful Oaxacan restaurant in Huntingdon Park called Guelaguetza. Along with unique Oaxacan dishes like clayudas (a pizza the size of a hubcap), and a wide variety of multi-hued mole sauces, Guelaguetza offers grasshoppers fried with chilies, salted and limed, crunchy as potato chips, or more precisely as croutons, which they resemble in flavor and texture. (Imagine croutons with legs. Or, alternately, don't.)
When it comes to bug-eating, though, Guelaguetza is a one-trick pony. But when it comes to a panoply of edible insects, there's nothing in town quite like the Pan-Asian restaurant Typhoon at the Santa Monica Airport. Typhoon is a fine place to go for the cooking of China, Japan, Korea, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the surrounding lands. But it's also the place to go for crickets, ants, sea worms, scorpions... the list goes on, depending on what owner Brian Vidor can get his hands on.
The most popular insects on the menu at Typhoon are the crickets. Or to be more precise, the Taiwanese Stir-Fried Crickets. The ever voluble Vidor says, "They have a crispy, nutty flavor. And they go well with beer. You just pop them in your mouth like peanuts." Though they’re Taiwanese in heritage, they're not raised in Taiwan. Instead, Vidor has them shipped via UPS (and what an interesting bill of lading that must be!) from a farm in Louisiana. He says, tongue in cheek, that he's not quite sure of how many he's sent at any one time: "We don't know what they weigh, because they hop off the scale too quickly." (For the record, they're stir-fried in oil with garlic, chile peppers and Asian basil, though most folks never get much past the simple fact that they're eating grasshoppers.)
Following the success (or at least the notice) of crickets on his menu, Vidor added ants. They're Changbai Mountain Ants, from the far north of China, above North Korea. "They're considered to be the finest culinary ants in the world," says Vidor. He points out that ants, which have a texture something like mushy caviar, are actually quite good for you, an excellent source of the B vitamins, along with D and E. They're 42 percent protein, and supply eight essential amino acids. Over the years, Vidor has served them dried, sprinkled on shoestring potatoes. Kind of like parmesan cheese.
What's intriguing about the bug dishes at Typhoon is how serious the kitchen takes them. Unlike the whimsical items at the Entomological Society, much effort has gone into flavoring these creepy crawlies. Over the years, his insect offerings have included white sea worms fried Thai style, flavored with ginger, chili, peanuts and lime, with a tamarind dipping sauce; deep-fried scorpions on shrimp toast; fried bamboo caterpillars in a crispy noodle nest, with a sweet-and-spicy dipping sauce. (The caterpillars – rot duan in Thai, which means "train" – are described by Vidor as "awesome. All they eat is bamboo, so they have a wonderful flavor.") There are also chicken-stuffed waterbugs, should you feel the need.
An important point here is that all the insects served at Typhoon (and at Guelaguetza as well) are farmed; they're raised to be eaten. Vidor says, "Bugs that have been exposed to Raid are not a good idea. We wouldn't encourage people to try to duplicate our recipes with bugs they've collected from their backyards."
What Typhoon serves is just the tip of the insectival iceberg. And it reminds me of the observation by Jonathan Swift that, "He was a bold man who first swallowed an oyster." The question is not so much why we'd want to eat an insect, as it is why we eat the creatures that we do eat. Eating a chicken isn't all that much stranger than a grasshopper. It's just that, to date, KFC has meant solely Kentucky Fried Chicken... and not Kentucky Fried Cricket. But then, anything is possible.
– Merrill Shindler