Quick Henry, The Flit?
In a very tenuous connection between this NOT and Cinco de Mayo, Mexican food has a number of dishes with insect ingredients. Here is a list of some of those bug dishes.
But it’s not just Mexico — this is a Wall Street Journal article about efforts to introduce kids to edible insects in Switzerland.
So let’s talk about eating bugs, insects, worms, spiders, centipedes — the kinds of things Steve McQueen’s lead character ate in Papillon.
I’ve never eaten them but I’m not especially opposed. I eat shrimp, crabs and shellfish, which aren’t all that different conceptually, even if they’re not particularly similar species. I think my main problem would be the chitinous bits like the shells and legs. I’m not a big fan of finding things like sunflower shells or bay leaves in my food either.
Or more broadly, what are you opinions about eating any kind of invertebrate, from deep fried clam strips to lobster thermidor to oysters on the half shell. Do you have a strong squick factor that blocks you from eating any of them, are you OK as long as they’re in unrecognizable form like crab cakes, or are you OK staring at the eyes and legs? Does this correspond to a general squick factor in other arenas as well? As in, you won’t eat oysters and you won’t pick up anything in a tidepool either? No judgments — this kind of thing can hit a pretty primal reaction most people have.
I enjoy eating almost everything. I would try bugs if prepared for me not by me. Sometimes my mind does fuck with me. Like once I was enjoying frog legs for the first (and last time) at a French restaurant. By number five, I started feeling queasy because I was imagining how many frogs were in my plate and how the bones, muscle and tendons work together. I guess I’m not great at stomaching food when the animal is whole (other than fish). I once went to a Buddhist temple for a funeral. They served toads amongst other foods. The little guys looked like they were just chilling on the platter. I couldn’t bring myself to trying them.
Come to think of it, the one land-based invertebrate I’ve eaten is escargot, and they were fine. Loaded with garlic and cheese, so what was the difference between clams?
I *adore* Escargot!😉😁🤗
The garlic & butter don’t hurt, either! It tastes like dirt, and the color *green,* but in a good way😆
Made my bestie try it, when she came to visit around my birthday, a few years ago–there’s a French restaurant owned by a French man who married a Minnesotan, and all their food–and DESSERTS–are impeccable.
My other favorite from there, is the Mussels in Cresm Sauce–served with a half-baguette, rather than the fries which are on the menu now (originally you could order it with the bread *or* the fries–apparently most folks got it with the fries, so that’s now the standard on the menu…. the baguette is far better, because the bread’s neutrality highlights the lightly *briny* flavor of the mussels & sauce FAR better than thd saltier fries do–you end up losing the delicate flavors in the sauce, when you eat it with fries🙃).
Right on. Once you dig in, it’s just great.
As I’ve said I’m not a very adventurous eater so I probably wouldn’t eat bugs unless I was stranded and starving.
One thing I’ve read is that farmed salmon is generally fed a lot of small fish, so the environmental benefit is small. BUT….
…insects are a good candidate to replace all of those small fish in the aquaculture system. So essentially we could convert grasshoppers to lox, and everyone could be better off.
Have you guys ever been to a churrascaria? I think this is my second time mentioning these. They’re Brazilian “steakhouses” but really more like meat…what they do is, it’s prix-fixe and the waiter brings around animal parts and slices them tableside. So say you’re in the mood for lamb. Rather than little medallions they bring over an entire leg and slice it before you. Parts of pig and cow. The food is always so delicious, but even this committed carnivore gets a tad squeamish. Luckily we usually go with hard-drinking friends of ours so there are introductory caipirinhas to start with and they calm the nerves.
Oh PS: That vegetarian friend of mine will be coming over on Sunday after all, sans boyfriend (it seems weird to refer to people on either of side of 60 as boyfriends and girlfriends, but we have a gay friend who’s 71 who has a much younger boyfriend and calling the younger guy “the boyfriend” doesn’t sound strange) and ANYWAY I will debut the Coronation Quiche. The vegetarian friend is of Irish descent but she studied abroad in England so I don’t think she’ll be too offended.
As a special ocasion for our son we went to Fogo de Chao, which is a mass market version. What made me sad was they had feijoada on the menu as a nod toward their roots, but it never actually appeared while we were there.
Make your own!
https://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/feijoada
This isn’t that difficult, and the one time I made this some of my work was done for me by that outrageously expensive butcher shop that has no reason to exist in this neighborhood, especially post-pandemic by which time so many independent places have closed down. I am more convinced than ever that this is a vanity project underwritten by family funding. I didn’t have to smoke my own pork chops and they happened to have linguiça. I cheated on the manioca but I can’t remember what I did.
It’s funny that Eric Ripert of all people contributed this recipe. This is like Julia Child throwing out a recipe for Nigerian Beef Stew.
Yes!!!!!!😁
We have some here;
https://www.rodiziogrill.com/maplegrove/
Went with a former roommate & her co-worker-friends–and pretty universally, the chicken hearts were some of EVERYONE’S favorites, they were incredibly tender, and sooooo tasty (I grew up eating “giblets”/hearts & gizzards–but the version i grew up with was pan-fried, not grilled).
I’ve eaten bugs by choice (or unwilling.)
It’s not bad, but not my favorite.
On the other hand am split on the molluscs… I enjoy eating shrimp, clams, oysters, lobster, crab and hate octopus, squid and sea urchin.
One exception to the multiple limbs, no shell rule… I like dried cuttlefish (or the Japanese candied style.)
I had training today on day shift so I came home at 6:20pm and decided to read/post/spit bile about Justice Thomas.
Enjoying watching the slow drip drip drip drip of his denials going sour as each item leaks out. I think Propublica understands the importance of a Supreme Court free of corruption. Propublica probably have so much dirt on them that they could end up destroying everyone involved.
But like the plans of mice and men, I ended up passing out from lack of sleep for an hour.
I just came back in a 1/2 hour ago from cutting the front part of my lawn. Six or seven days straight of rain have made my lawn into a jungle and I had to chop it down (at least keep my neighbor from giving me side eye… he can live with the weeds, but as long as I do the controlling.)
When it gets to that point I just give up on the mower and throw the weed whacker at the whole thing.
Synchronous dining; I had escargot for lunch today at a local bistro, made from the original Georges Perrier Le Bec-Fin recipe. Yum. I was once taken there for a business lunch, and Georges himself came out to schmooze the table.
I love when chefs do that! We once went to a restaurant that was pretty hot at the time and quite pricey but an out-of-town friend was staying with us and was paying. I mentioned this to a friend/coworker beforehand and she said, “Oh, I went to high school with the chef/owner, say hello from me if she makes the rounds.” She did, I did, and she settled in for a 15-minute chat, and we got free after-dinner drinks and desserts. I still have her personal email address somewhere. She was lovely but I can’t remember her name at the moment and my contacts list is a farrago of work-related/medical/friends new, old and forgotten…
Unwittingly, I have eaten bugs. There’s the ones that I swallowed while biking. They fly into your mouth occasionally despite your best efforts. There are the ones that are allowed to be part of your food (a certain percentage of any processed food can contain bugs). And my sister assured me that I ate a roach as a toddler — she claims that while the act was not witnessed, the evidence was still present. She may be lying, but since she got into trouble for not watching me, I suspect it’s true.
That said, no. I’m allergic to shellfish and they’re just bugs anyway. So I will not choose to eat bugs unless there’s no other way to feed myself.
Fresh termites taste minty. We ate them once during a visit to an archaeological site because the guide was talking about some local food sources. The undergrad dudebros were all squicked out about it, so I at some. It was fine.
I’ve also eaten a lot of ants. As in ants found their way into our packed lunches during fieldwork and you can’t get them all out so you just shrug and consider it extra protein with your burrito or PB&J. Shrug. Not exactly fun but also they weren’t a bitey kind of ants so it was just awkward but not painful.
The only seafood I can remember trying and *not* being a fan of, was trying oysters on the half shell. The flavor was good, but the *texture* was a bit too “boogers-in-snot” for me.
*Smoked* oysters, oyster stew, and oyster *soup* on the other hand?
Loooooove all of them, and I have since childhood😁
I love octopus, squid/calamari, blue prawns (with Rooster Mayo from the 112 Eatery), shrimp, scallops… pretty much any bivalve & sea-bug I’ve tried so far…
The aforementioned escargot is something I love, but I can’t really think of any/many land/air bugs I’ve eaten…
Something I’d love to try, if I ever get the opportunity, are the grilled/fried versions of these–i thiiiink the first time I saw them, was on one of Andrew Zimmern’s old shows (maybe Bizarre Foods?)–his description of the texture & flavor of the coconut grubs when they were grilled, sounded REALLY intriguing!
https://www.itourvn.com/blog/challenge-yourself-with-coconut-worms-mekong-delta-s-signature-dish
https://travelislife.org/chontacuro-eat-live-worms/
https://www.atlasobscura.com/foods/suri-grubs-peru