Bugged

by David MacNeal

  “Is it good?” inquires Eri.

  “I’ll say,” contemplatively, “not really.”

  She bravely gives it a taste. “I’m not sure how to express that feeling,” she says solemnly. “It tastes very weird.”

  It is time for Giriko to head home to check on her 10-month-old. Eri and I move on to the tarantula legs. A tad “oily” with a taste of overcharred crab. They were cooked right over a fire, hence the butt goop that has exploded and solidified like cooling lava. “That’s tarantula shit, right?” I ask Eri.

  “Umm, yes. I think so.” We both scowl at it. Neither of us are tempted. And thus concludes the Bug Crawl. But as challenging as the dinner plates were, I come away with a new sense of appreciation for insect foods.

  Companies like Chirps, Chapul, or Ento may rely on a marketing strategy that masks the faces of insects to recruit entomophagists. But in the culinary world, I think there’s potential in making long-lasting impressions without trickery. “A great dish hits you like a Whip-It,” wrote Momofuku chef David Chang. “There’s momentary elation, a brief ripple of pure pleasure in the spacetime continuum.”

  While some insects/ingredients repelled me (at least psychologically), these bugs represent a reinvention of our diet. New culinary discoveries. What’s interesting, though, reflecting on my insect dining, is that that “momentary elation” was pretty elusive. Remember the soy-boiled locusts? Awareness of my enjoyment of the dish hit me later as an afterthought. This was exemplified by the few morsels left in the bowl as a social courtesy. It was that good. This is perhaps the best solution to attract Westerners to insects: deliciousness.

  * * *

  US archeological digs by David Madsen in 1984 revealed “grasshopper fragments” from 5,000 years ago in caves where Great Basin tribes used them as a food source. The Northern Ute tribe occasionally ground them into a cake traded with settlers for supplies. And it was common for Alaska Athabascan to indulge in the plump maggots of gadflies burrowed in the backs of caribou. They’re said to taste “as fine as gooseberries.” In Mexico, mealworm dust makes a fantastic tortilla and weaver ant eggs are a “delicacy” called escamoles, aka Mexican caviar, writes Dana Goodyear. Today this traditional Aztec dish is in high demand—so much so that multiple smugglers have been caught and jailed time and time again. Same for the Africans smuggling prized mopane caterpillars (zinc, iron, calcium, phosphorus, potassium) into Europe. There, insects are said to be worth their weight in gold. The top-selling nonwood forest product at the Sahakone Dan Xang fresh food market in Laos since 1990 remains insects, especially weaver ant eggs and grasshoppers. Second-most sold are vegetables. The Southeast Asian island of Borneo enjoys rice bugs mashed “with chillies and salt … cook[ed] in hollow bamboo stems,” writes Ruparao Gahukar. Elsewhere in the world, sickly kids are given “insect biscuits.”

  So it’s weird that this long-standing relationship with insects has been so forgotten by the West. If we are to one day encourage future generations to expand their diets, it’ll be the sage-like culinary masters who convince them. Bugs are already popping up in Michelin-rated restaurants.

  Crickets are prepared regularly at Noma in Copenhagen.8 More impressive, though, is the testing ground Noma’s chef René Redzepi started called the Nordic Food Lab.9 Inside is a room where foraged ingredients are tested, such as umami-rich garum, fermented with grasshoppers. And Brazil’s São Paulo restaurant D.O.M. serves a pineapple dessert topped with a spiky leafcutter ant that has a lemongrass zest. The popular Amazonian ant was a serendipitous discovery made by chef Alex Atala while visiting jungle villages. Manhattan’s Black Ant restaurant offers a variety of such seasoned dishes—taking a note from Oaxaca’s much-craved chapulines—like the grasshopper-crusted shrimp.

  Meal preparation can be influential in countries where entomophagy is already engrained in the culture, converting naysayers. When Kenyan economist Monica Ayieko wanted to promote entomophagy in Lake Victoria, where tropical heat causes food shortages, she did so with an insect smorgasbord: mayfly crackers and termite meatloaf to name some. Ultimately the termite sausages won with 65 percent of the subjects favoring new culinary takes as opposed to traditional preparation. “Two participants commented,” she writes, that “‘insects will always be insects regardless of how they are prepared or served.’”

  However, this isn’t how our brain is hardwired. We actually eat with our eyes. And as famous Seattle bug chef David George Gordon told one reporter: “The stomach always votes last.”

  Le Cordon Bleu may not offer entomophagy courses just yet. But if it did, Gordon would proctor. His accolades include winning a couple of insect cook-off challenges and experimentation like his Three Bee Salad. It calls for bee adults, pupae, and larvae. His signature dish is the Orthopteran Orzo, comprised of wingless and ovipositor-less cricket nymphs that are “more tender than the grown-ups,” and parsley to stave off “cricket-breath.” He recommends that the crickets fast for a day so they’re fecal-free. Next, separate the necrotic bugs from the group, freeze the lot, rinse them, and heat up the skillet.

  Gordon favors a visible approach to serving bugs because it ethically does more justice to the bug. Taste triumphs over all. “If it’s saving the planet but tastes like cardboard, no one’s going to care,” he says.

  His gastronomic scruples partly inspired his critically acclaimed trailblazer The Eat-a-Bug Cookbook in 1998. It landed him dozens of TV appearances, including a spot cooking alongside Conan O’Brien, and lectures across 32 states and overseas. David George Gordon, however, is not an entomologist. And besides taking several cooking classes, he’s no certified master chef. His anthropological interest in entomophagy began in 1996. For a year and a half he learned the nuanced flavors of ento ingredients, spending, for example, two months nailing down variances in one bug. Is there a difference in taste from domestically or wild-reared crickets? If they’re frozen and defrosted, does that affect the flavor?

  “Mealworms, for instance, have a mushroomy taste,” he informs me, “so they’re great mixed in with sauces.” Not so much on ice cream, as others have tried—“that’s not a savvy pairing.”

  A career high point came in March 2015 when he was asked to cater the annual Explorer’s Club dinner at the American Museum of Natural History. The black-tie crowd included Lou Sorkin, the “Bedbug King of New York” (chapter 5), as well as celebrity scientists like Neil deGrasse Tyson.

  “I’ll stick to this claim that it was the largest bug[-eating] event in recorded history,” Gordon says. A range of delicacies were served buffet style, including deep-fried tarantula, bacon-wrapped Cambodian mole crickets, American cockroach canapés, black and red ants on a log, and his signature, Orthopteran Orzo.

  The dishes were well received. “My theory now is to do catered events for Hollywood types or the tech industry,” he says. Perhaps then it will trickle down to the point where we can purchase prepackaged lunches at a Safeway or Trader Joe’s.

  It makes you wonder … Will edible insects become luxe, effete plates served in an upper-class din, or a mass-produced food with hormone-injected crickets the size of plump hogs (the lifeblood of radioactive monster movies)? Really, it’s hard to say at this point. Gordon divulges the extravagant cost to cater the Explorer’s Club dinner: $15,000. That was for the bugs alone. While online businesses have made it easier for entotarians, the high insect prices have fluctuated little. The industry is still too young. Also, importers like Thailand Unique, which sells a variety of exotic absurdities like Bugapoop Tea Bags, often ship ingredients that are “desiccated, crunchy and terrible,” says Gordon. Ento connoisseurs are just too few and far between to make a stink about it.

  Wild insect hunters10 have yet to make a mark in the United States. But something may happen if we eat processed or culinary-grade insects on a regular basis over several years. We may actually be inclined to raise insects as some hobby farmers do with chickens. It’s not much of a stretch. Again, young entrepreneurs are seizing the opportu
nity.

  Jakub Dzamba, a 30-something Canadian inventor, knows this. His Cricket Reactors—vertical Plexiglas mazes—“maintain superior hygiene levels” for human-consumption-grade crickets and can be kept on your kitchen countertop. The prototype modules, which look like two stacked microwaves, can “grow” a half pound in a month. As a long-term goal for the project, Dzamba wants others to mass-produce crickets as either a hobby or an industrial farm. With 100 square meters of Cricket Reactors, you can yield one ton of meat per year. Currently he’s working on scaling reactors up to retrofitted cargo containers ready to produce upon delivery. These 200-square-foot Chirpboxes are capable of yielding 2.7 million crickets on a monthly basis, which translates to about 1,200 pounds in food.

  Katharina Unger and Julia Kaisinger are also in-home incubator entrepreneurs. The Austrian duo recently brought the LIVIN Farms Hive to market—a climate-controlled desktop kit that looks like a chic metropolitan apartment complex. The multilayered farm, governed by a number of sensors, separates mealworms by their growth stage. Adult meal beetles lay eggs in the penthouse. As the eggs mature and evolve, they procedurally filter into the trays below, composting kitchen waste in the process, with fans reducing that buggy aroma. A past incubator raised black soldier flies—a choice option given their less chitin-y bodies and knack for food by-product conversion. But mealworms had a broader appeal. (I can attest how well they substitute for peanuts with beer.) Maintained properly, the unit churns out up to 500 grams of mealworms per week. That comes at a $700 price tag. But for an endless generator of food? Not too shabby. It also serves as a microscale example of what industrialists can achieve in food security.

  By and large, entomophagy provides one answer to world hunger.

  “Instead of trying to get all of America to eat bugs,” Gordon says, “focus on the people that are already there.” He’s had success convincing people, although a mild or “not bad” response won’t recruit return customers anytime soon. “What’s funny is kids are much more adventurous than their parents. They say, ‘Gee, I couldn’t get him to eat anything at home, and here he is volunteering to eat a scorpion claw’ … That’s where I think the real change is coming.”

  University of Georgia professor Marianne Shockley sees this every year toward the conclusion of the Bug Camp she hosts at the university. On the last day they’ll have a “bug party,” and students will cook mealworm cookies and cricket pizza.

  I was hell-bent to put such adolescent curiosity to the test in my own group of friends. Would it be possible to not only pique their interests, but potentially convert them? And how much smaller would my small group of friends become afterward? To find out, I created a Facebook invite to a most unnatural dinner for a bunch of folks I’ve known since high school.

  * * *

  I’m staying, while I visit, in my old room in Southern California’s Granada Hills. I’m writing in the now-converted office and miss the doorbell when the delivery man comes. My mom is less than ecstatic when a University of Georgia package arrives on her porch from Marianne Shockley. Among other insect products, she’s sent me about a pound of dry-roasted crickets. My mom can barely look at me as I bring it in and empty the contents into the freezer. I can only imagine her face when the live waxworms arrive.

  This bug soiree came about with the help of Marianne and David George Gordon.

  Me: Hi Marianne … Hope you’ll remember me from the ESA conference. I plan on cooking up a bug feast for my friends in L.A. I’ve just narrowed down the dates. Just wanted to confirm you’d still be able to send along some ingredients.

  Marianne: Sounds great. This is very exciting news!

  Me: Here’s what we have on the menu (taken from Edible and the Eat-a-Bug Cookbook) as well as the insect quantity for each …

  Wax Moth Tacos—1 cup of waxworms

  Curried Termite Stew—20 winged productive termites

  Cockroach Samosas—24 American cockroaches

  Three Bee Salad—40 frozen adult bees, 60 frozen bee pupae, 60 frozen bee larvae, 1 oz. bee pollen granules

  Superworm Tempura w/ Plum Dipping Sauce—24 frozen superworms

  Sweet ’n’ Spicy Summer June Bugs—???

  Pizza with Cicadas—8 subadult periodical cicadas

  Chocolate Cricket Torte—1 cup of crickets

  Marianne: I’m reaching out to my dear friend and colleague David George Gordon (DGG) to help me find a line of these items. Honestly, this is a very small order, and we have to get their minimum on some of these items, but I’ll certainly let you know … DGG, any thoughts on the termites, roaches, bee larvae, June bugs and cicadas?

  DGG: Thanks for getting in touch. Nice to see that you’ll be using a bunch of my recipes. I think the real go-to guy for edible insect supplies is Dave Gracer in Providence, Rhode Island. If you haven’t done so, I encourage you to get in touch with him ASAP.

  DGG (cont’d): Regarding June bugs, I’d get in touch with Paul Landkamer of Missouri Entomophagy … In the past, I’ve purchased American cockroaches from Carolina Biological Supply. They’re kinda pricey, but at least you know they were raised in a sanitary environment.

  Given time constraints (and perhaps it is too much to ask my friends to eat cockroach samosas), I end up serving Wax Moth Tacos and cricket cake. As recommended by Edible author Daniella Martin, I go through San Diego Wax Worm and get them shipped overnight. With both crickets and euthanized waxworms in my parents’ garage freezer, bug night is under way.

  Around 5:00 p.m., I start by chopping hardened crickets. The hollowed, toasty bodies crumble into halves and quarters. Traditionally, in the past, good ol’ mama might be sitting where I am prepping meals with our family’s throwback recipes from Egypt—grape leaves, hummus, bamya matboukha, molokhiya. But she won’t come out of her bedroom until the insects are out of the house.

  Score one for the neophobes.

  My younger sister Kristen agrees to help me bake the chocolate torte. She shares relatively the same viewpoint as our mom so I am surprised by her cool when I point out the bowl of chopped and roasted crickets I’m about to mix into the cake batter. In this processed form, you can’t tell what it is.

  Jim Grude and his wife, Tara, are the first to arrive. Two more couples are followed by Matt Nyby and his brother Josh, and later Nick Gutierrez, my entomologist friend who ignited this recent insect fascination of mine. He’s brought guests of his own in a cookie container—a discoid and Madagascar hissing cockroach. To prevent a likely “hissy fit” on the part of my mother—still locked safely in her bedroom—he returns the roaches to the emptied plastic box. Aside from Nick, nobody has ever eaten insects, and I’ve double-checked to see if my guests have shellfish allergies.11

  Drinks in hand, the crowd hovers around the snack table, which contains two bowls of salsa, a vegetable tray, and two large bowls of chips (sea salt and BBQ flavored). Kristen pops the springform pan into the oven to bake for 40 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Time to prep the waxworms for the skillet. I take the San Diego delivery out of the freezer. In the blue pots the worms appear as bits of lifeless flesh shaved from a cheese grater. The problem is the worms are mixed in with sawdust. Jim helps me sift a thousand larvae from the four cups of sawdust, picking out the black and graying ones as we go along. Kristen and the others continue eating chips with nary a wince.

  “What do they feel like?” Kristen asks. I offer the bowl of larvae and she touches one for a hundredth of a second. “Augh!” She cringes.

  “When’s grub?” asks the puntastic Matt Nyby. It’s nearly 7:00 p.m. now. My guests are starting to get antsy (hey-ooo!) and the larvae are no longer cold. I get the onions golden in the pan and scoop in the mound of worms. They sizzle. I keep stirring them around on the stovetop over medium-high heat. The worms straighten and glisten. Their outlines turn transparent. I slide them into a serving bowl and place it alongside cilantro, tomatoes, tortillas, and cheese.

  But the novelty aspect of the tacos is not the real test ton
ight. After arranging the taco line, I turn to Kristen. “So, you ready to eat some bugs?”

  “I might have the cake,” she says with a suspicious glance.

  “But,” I start, “at least try the tacos, you’ve already eaten crickets.” She stops in her tracks. “Those chips,” I say, her face reddening, eyes wide and mouth pursed, “are made from cricket powder.”

  Kristen is dumbfounded. “What?! No!” But once the initial shock subsides, the curiosity sets in. A couple of friends thought it was a “healthy” chip—the ones you’d find at higher-end markets, made with flaxseed or wheat. People continue eating them, and Tara asks where I got them, taking a picture of the Chirps bag I bring out. I ask everyone later how it makes them feel. Overall, there’s interest. It is healthy. And maybe, were it widely available, they might pick up insect-derived processed foods. Nick is “elated” to find out they were made of crickets. But my sister remains opposed for now.

  I’m happy to say the tacos and cricket torte were a hit (and that Kristen bears no grudge for the dupery). Jim Grude proceeded to eat three tacos. And the overall mood of the crowd was one of titillation. It reminds me of something Marianne Shockley said during our phone conversation. She teaches about 250 college students every year. “Very rarely does a student finish my class without having tasted an insect. Are they going to go out and buy something the next day? Maybe. Maybe not. But do they at least overcome that initial barrier? Yes.” Over 15 years of teaching, she’s converted thousands, possibly tens of thousands, into entomophagists. “My mission … is really to let people know how diverse, how beautiful [insects are], and how they, literally, are all around us. All the time.”

  Humans and insects. I’m not certain where our bug affairs will lead over the next couple centuries. But the optimistic cynic in me likes to believe that it might reflect one of the longest marriages we’ve had with nature. One that requires going back to what is arguably the most imperative species on Earth, depicted on cave walls in Valencia, Spain, 15,000 years ago: honeybees.