Archive for August 12th, 2010

By FELICITY CLOAKE
Last updated at 11:09 AM on 11th August 2010

Unconvinced: Felicity Cloake tries ants and scorpions in an effort to be green

South American ants are huge. Trust me, I’m about to eat one. Until I notice that their eyes are the size of currants and I lose my appetite.

It’s amazing I even got that close — just last week I felt such antipathy towards red ants that I poured boiling water on to a nest by my front door. And yet here I am, confronted with a plate of their giant relatives in the name of sustainable living. Sometimes it’s not easy being green.

But then, if the United Nations gets its way, we might all soon be adding creepy-crawlies to our weekly shopping lists. The UN is considering strategies to cut levels of meat consumption worldwide as part of its commitment to stamp out famine and cut global warming.

And it claims livestock, such as cows and pigs, requires too much space and fodder to be an energy-efficient source of food for the everexpanding population. Ultimately, it argues, there’s simply not enough land for us all to eat roast beef.

And so the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation is urging us to try other alternatives, including insects. Yikes!

I’m a pretty adventurous eater: breaded alligator, crispy pig’s ears, donkey salami — I’ve tried them all. So I was confident that I’d be able to handle anything. Until I saw some of the grubs that may soon be on our menus.

Still, if this is the future, it’s best to get ahead of the game. The packaging for giant toasted ants (£15.95 for 25g from www.edible.com) assures me that the inch-long insects have a ‘nutty, bacon-like taste, with an earthy, spicy kick’. They are, it trumpets, ‘the perfect party snack’.

I’m not altogether sure that’s true; I can barely manage to pick one up, let alone pluck up the courage to offer a bowl to friends and family. But I take a deep breath and gingerly bite down.

The first thing I notice is it’s very dry, and as crisp as an autumn leaf, for which I’m thankful. Juiciness, while desirable in a steak, is somehow stomach-churning in an insect.

The second is that, perhaps predictably, it doesn’t taste like bacon. Beneath the salt, the ant has a faint, curiously sweet flavour; earthy is the perfect description. I swallow hurriedly. (Some hours later I look in the mirror and discover a little black leg stuck in my teeth.)

For pudding, I nibble delicately on a scorpion, which is about the size of a £2 coin. Although its sting is intact – and pretty nasty-looking – I’m assured it’s perfectly safe (the usual practice is to draw the venom out by soaking the beastie in alcohol).

As well as being ‘detoxified’, the box tells me that my scorpion is ‘farm-raised’, as well it might be for £3.95 a pop. Well, it did come from Selfridges.

Either I’m getting used to the idea, or the fact it’s covered in thick dark chocolate from pincer to sting makes it slightly more palatable.

late of ants: The UN is considering strategies to cut levels of meat consumption so we could soon be adding creeply crawlies to our weekly shopping list

Clearly I’m going to struggle with the insect revolution, but logically, my reaction is ridiculous. I’m not put off honey by the fact it’s been regurgitated by bees, and I am an enthusiastic consumer of crustaceans, the sea-dwelling cousins of ants, flies and locusts. (Indeed, the white meat inside many large spiders is reputed to taste rather like prawn.)

According to Marc Dennis, a New York artist and enthusiastic convert  to the cause, our attitude to insects is just like it was to sushi 20 years ago.

And the reaction of most Europeans and North Americans towards insects makes us the weird ones in global terms; it’s estimated that 80 per cent of the world’s population eat them, and with good reason.

The UN reports that ‘as a food source, insects are highly nutritious’, and they require a mere fraction of the resources to rear, pound for pound, as more conventional meats.

Some species boast almost twice the protein of mainstream meat and fish, and in their larvae stage they tend to be rich in fat, vitamins and minerals.

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors probably learnt the value of insects from the animals around them, but the practice didn’t die out as the human race dragged itself up by the sandal straps – the Greeks and Romans were partial to the odd bug.

Pliny, the 1st-century Roman author, wrote that beetle larvae, reared on a mixture of flour and wine, were considered a great treat among hisfellow toga-wearers. And anyone dismissing this as a heathen practice would do well to remember John the Baptist’s diet of locusts and honey.

Perhaps the reason we never got into the habit is that Britain’s temperate climate and fertile soils made it easy to rear cattle and sheep. That rendered entomophagy – or insect-eating – unnecessary, and we learnt to view bugs as agricultural pests.

By contrast, in other cultures, they’re still prized as a delicacy. In Japan, they like to marinate the grubs of the longhorn beetle in soy sauce before grilling them. In Samoa, they feed them on coconut shavings for a few days, then roast them over charcoal, wrapped in a banana leaf.

Thailand is thought to have 15,000 small farms raising crickets, and the South African mopane worm industry is worth $85 million. Locusts are also a popular snack there. In C. Louis Leipoldt’s cookbook Cape Cookery, he says one should ‘dust them with a mixture of pepper and salt and shallow-fry them in fat till they are crisp and brown. They taste not unlike whitebait stuffed with buttered toast.’

The French gave insects a try in the 1880s, holding a special bug banquet for the daring gourmands of Paris. The feast included maybug grubs rolled in batter and then fried until golden.

Funnily enough, grubs didn’t catch on with this nation of snail-eaters. Perhaps insects are like Marmite. Or if you don’t try them before the age of three, you’ll never be convinced.

Paul Cook, who owns Osgrow, a Bristol-based exotic meat specialist which sells delicacies such as Thai green curry crickets, admits even he’s not a big fan of his oddest products. ‘I have to eat them from time to time,’ he tells me, ‘but I wouldn’t order them in a restaurant.’

He’s in hot demand for unusual cookery demonstrations (John the Baptist stir-fries being a particular speciality) and says he never has a problem getting people to try things.

Mealworms are a good beginner’s insect – he says they’re a bit like ‘the crunchy bits at the bottom of a bag of popcorn’ – although he concedes that ‘it definitely helps if you don’t look’.

Post courtesy of Felicity Cloake.

To read more, visit: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/food/article-1301970/GOOD-GRUB-GUIDE-The-UN-says-eating-creepy-crawlies-save-planet—Our-girl-finds-hard-swallow.html#ixzz0wOvJQGwt