Eat-A-Bug Cookbook

Part One: Don’t Worry, Be Hoppy
 
Nine Culinary Leaps of Faith, Using Crickets, Grasshoppers, and Their Kin
 
 
There are about 20,000 living species in the order Orthoptera, which, in the words of my favorite know-it-all, the nineteenth-century naturalist Reverend J. G. Wood, contains “some of the finest and, at the same time, the most grotesquely formed members of the insect tribe.”
 
During Reverend Wood’s time, cockroaches, praying mantises, and stick insects were regarded as card-carrying orthopterans. Today, however, membership has been restricted to crickets, grasshoppers, locusts, and katydids. These animals are easily recognized by their narrow leathery forewings; broad, membranous hind wings; and muscular hind legs that are well-developed for jumping. Of course, there are exceptions, even among this select clan. For example, the mole cricket—a small, brown-bodied burrowing plant pest—more closely resembles a crayfish than Cousin Jiminy.
 
In some parts of the world, Orthoptera are sources of entertainment as well as food—live dinner theater, if you will. In Japan, for instance, singing katydids and crickets are kept as pets, confined in miniature cages with slender bamboo bars. Throughout the People’s Republic of China, the sport of cricket fighting is guaranteed to draw sizable crowds, with betting far livelier than at horse races or kickboxing events.
 
Orthoptera are relished by the indigenous people of Africa, Australia, South and Central America, Mexico, the Middle East, and many Pacific islands. Even in the largely unentomophagous United States, there’s been some interest in orthopteran edibles. Many of us fondly remember chocolate-covered grasshoppers, sold in tins by Reese Finer Foods, Inc, during the early 1960s. While these particular treats are no longer commercially available, one can still purchase chocolate-covered crickets, individually wrapped in foil and marketed by Fluker Farms of Port Allen, Louisiana.
 
The largest insect-rearing operation in the world, Fluker Farms sells over one million house crickets (Acheta domesticus) in a week. Admittedly, most of these are sold as bait for sport fishing and food for pet reptiles and amphibians. Still, a small percentage of the company’s stock is destined for human consumption, primarily at zoo- or museum-sponsored events. According to Fluker’s marketing director Henry “T-Joe” Frank, his company’s clients include at least one restaurant, Typhoon, a pan-Asian eatery at the Santa Monica Airport in California, which features crickets in its Taiwanese stir-fry dishes. An appetizer portion is about six ounces before frying, says Typhoon’s proprietor, Brian Vidor. “We really don’t know what the crickets weigh,” he jokes, “because they hop off the scale too quickly.”
 
 
Locusts in Leviticus
 
Nearly all the Orthoptera are vegetarians, favoring fresh leaves and stems and foregoing any plant (or animal) matter that’s decayed. This dietary preference, which is innately more hygienic than scavenging, may explain why locusts have been branded as kosher (that is, fit for human consumption) in the Old Testament.
 
In Leviticus, the book of the Bible in which the dietary laws are first addressed, the text plainly states that “all winged insects that go upon all fours are an abomination to you.” But despite this seemingly hard line against bug eating, a few entomophagous alternatives are identified. “These you may eat; the arbeh after his kind, the sal’am after his kind, the chargol after his kind, and the chagav after his kind.”
 
Most entomologists agree that the arbeh, sal’am, chargol, and chagav are really names for the same critter, the locust, in various stages of development. Some suggest that locusts were included in the list of approved (kosher) foods because they are so easily distinguished from other insects—thus limiting the chances of the devout mistakenly snacking on a species already deemed impure.
 
 
Beating the Bush for Big Bugs
 
Orthoptera, not buffalo, was the seasonal mainstay of many Plains tribes. Harvesting the abundant stocks was often a communal effort, with entire villages-men, women and children-working together to flush the six-legged game.
 
“They begin by digging a hole, ten or twelve feet in diameter, by four or five deep,” wrote Father de Smet, describing the tactics of the Shoshone in the 1800s:
 
Then, armed with long branches of artemisia, they surround a field of four or five acres, more or less, according to the number of people who are engaged in it. They stand about twenty feet apart and their whole work is to beat the ground, so as to frighten up the grasshoppers and make them bound forward. They chase them toward the center by degrees-that is, into the hole prepared for their reception. Their number is so considerable that frequently three or four acres furnish grasshoppers sufficient to fill the reservoir or hole.
 
This orthopteran bounty could then be hastily handpicked and stuffed into sacks, which were then soaked in salt water and—how convenient!—tossed into an oven for ten or fifteen minutes. Other tribes built large fires in their insect-catching pits, creating a bed of coals on which to roast any grasshoppers headed that way. Some tribes simply torched the grasslands and returned once the fires had died down to collect and eat the flame-broiled insects, straight from the scorched earth.
 
The potential of the various harvest techniques was nicely illustrated by entomologist David Madsen, who, with help for a few peers, rounded up Mormon crickets (Anabrus simplex) along the Utah-Colorado border. Two sweeps of the underbrush brought in batches of 5,652 and 9,876 crickets—an average catch of nearly eighteen and a half pounds. A pound of dried Mormon crickets contains about 1,270 calories, so the nutritional rewards from such a catch were quite large. In one hour, Madsen’s team had amassed the caloric equivalent of forty-three McDonald’s Big Macs, forty-nine slices of pizza, or eighty-nine chili dogs.
 
 
Chapter 1: Cooking With Crickets
 
Gryllus, the scientific name for the field cricket, is an open invitation to catch this insect and cook it. So is the delightfully optimistic chirp produced by this creature and its first cousin, the European house cricket (Acheta domesticus).
 
The cricket’s reputation as a songster has been celebrated by John Milton (“Far from all resort of mirth, Save the cricket on the hearth”) and Charles Dickens (“I have loved it for the many times I’ve heard it and the many thoughts its harmless music has given me”). While I cook almost exclusively with crickets that have been frozen and thawed, I still like to keep a few live crickets on hand at all times-just to serenade me and my guests.
 
Where crickets are especially abundant, edible specimens can be most efficiently captured by taking broad, upward swipes at tall grass or shrubbery with a short-handled net, a technique that entomologists call sweeping. A more leisurely approach involves the setting of what are commonly known as pitfall traps.
 
Here’s how it works: Dig a small hole with a garden trowel and sink a quart mason jar so the top is flush with the surface of the ground. Cover the mouth of the jar with a piece of wood, held a half inch above the ground by pebbles or twigs. Crickets that walk under the wood and into the trap will be unable to hop out and must stay there until you choose to retrieve them.
 
Store-bought crickets are more appealing to lazy-bugs like me. They’re also more environmentally friendly: There’s no reason to worry about overharvesting, as these tasty morsels have been bred in large quantities, solely to be eaten. Many pet stores now carry live house crickets as food for hedgehogs, iguanas, and other household insectivores.
 
Crickets can also be ordered directly from livestock suppliers, although these businesses may require that you purchase large quantities-as many as a thousand crickets at a time. Don’t panic if a livestock supplier is your only option; the extra crickets can be frozen and stored for later use.
 
Both captured and commercially reared live crickets should be kept in an empty ten-gallon aquarium or plastic storage bin. Either container must have a tight-fitting top, preferably made of fine mesh or perforated with small holes to ensure adequate ventilation. A light sprinkling of oatmeal makes a nice substrate, and a stack of inverted cardboard egg cartons can create a series of dark recesses and chambers through which the crickets can creep. Place a moistened sponge in one corner of the tank and a few pieces of wilted lettuce in another corner. You’ve now created the cricket equivalent of Club Med.
 
Be forewarned that adult male crickets are territorial. They will aggressively defend their turf—a trait that, under crowded conditions, is sure to cause trouble in paradise. Inspect your cricket colony each day for fatalities, removing any losers of the to-the-death contests.
 
Once the time comes to harvest your crickets, scoop up the desired number of live individuals. Be quick about it: These fellas can really jump! Transfer the crickets to a smaller container, also with a tight-fitting lid (a plastic cottage cheese carton with a perforated top is a worthy vessel), and put the container in the refrigerator for ten or fifteen minutes-just long enough to slow the metabolism of the cold-blooded contents. Now the crickets can be poured into a colander, rinsed with cold water, and spread on a small baking tray or foil-covered plate. Put the tray or plate in your refrigerator’s freezer compartment....