Cicadas will be emerging in the eastern US in May for a few noisy weeks. They've been dormant underground for the past 17 years. This time, we are being encouraged to think of them as a tasty meal or at least snack. The Washington Post, today, has a complete introduction.
Here's some relevant bits, if you want to prepare for the feast:
The brood is one of 15 batches of periodical cicadas, a set of species unique to the eastern United States. The insects spend 13 or 17 years underground before emerging into a cacophonous adulthood that lasts only a few weeks and consists of mating, egg-laying and dying. Entomologists expect the cicadas to emerge in the District and about 15 states beginning in mid- to late May.
The males will create their trademark din, and cicadas of both sexes may startle and annoy the people in their midst, but the insects do not sting or bite. For many birds, mammals and reptiles, the cicadas will provide weeks of meals.
Experienced cicada-eaters advise would-be entomophages to be alert for the mass emergence that will begin one May evening, when nymphs -- as many as 1.5 million per acre -- will crawl out of the soil and head for a vertical surface, usually a tree.
There they will molt, taking about an hour to squeeze out of their dust-colored skins. Once they have broken free, it is your moment to strike: Pluck the creamy white adults off the trees. Gather as many as you desire for the culinary adventures ahead. Admire their red eyes and furled wings.
Do hurry. The exoskeletons of the newly molted adults will turn black within about 12 hours and harden over the next couple days. Once that happens, the cicadas remain eminently edible but they lose their soft-shell cachet. They're also easier to apprehend in their just-molted stage.
If you don't want to eat your cicadas right off the tree, cookbook author Gordon recommends placing your bounty in the freezer. "It's a dignified death; they drift off into a deep sleep and never feel any pain," he says.
With your cicada supply on ice, the options unfold.
Native Americans dry roasted them using fire-heated rocks. John Zyla, an amateur naturalist in Ridge, in southern St. Mary's County, suggests laying a few dozen on a cookie sheet and baking them in a 350-degree oven for five minutes.
Then serve with toothpicks and a selection of condiments for dipping, ranging from sweet to savory: chocolate sauce, honey, melted cheese, ketchup, mustard. Voila: cicada fondue.
The females, loaded with eggs, are more of a bite than the males, whose abdomens are largely hollow, in part because of the anatomical structures that allow them to make noise. Zyla likens the dry-roasted males to an "air-puffed Cheeto."
Some purists simply boil cicadas for a minute or two, in order to better appreciate their flavor. Other entomophages recommend stir-frying them; they will absorb the flavors of the rest of the dish. Some aficionados like their cicadas battered and deep-fried.
Grubco Inc., a Fairfield, Ohio, company that is one of the nation's leading suppliers of edible insects, reports that human consumption is rising. Company President Dale Cochran estimates that he sells 20,000 crickets, mealworms and wax worms every week to people who will eat the insects or serve them to others. A decade ago, he sold a quarter as many bugs for human consumption. "It goes in cycles," he says. "The 'Fear Factor' show has kind of increased demand, and at Halloween time we get quite a few people ordering them."
"The overall idea of eating insects is probably more widely accepted than it was 20 years ago in the U.S.," adds Tom Turpin, professor of entomology at Purdue University and founder of the Bug Bowl, an annual festival focused on insects that begins today in West Lafayette, Ind.
More than 30,000 people were expected to attend this year's two-day event, three times the number that showed up five years ago. Thousands of Bug Bowl-goers consume a stir-fried mealworm or a chocolate-dipped grasshopper.
Still, persuading people to eat a bug isn't easy. "We've all grown up to think of insects as basically the enemy," says Michael Schauff, a research entomologist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Not so in Asia, where Thais munch on fried grasshoppers and Japanese eat the rice grasshopper known as hashi, a practice that curbs the need to use pesticides in the paddies. Africans adore locusts and many varieties of caterpillars. Many people in Central and South America consume ants, grasshoppers, stink beetles, and, well, the list is long.
Bug-eating enthusiasts suggest that Americans should include a few more insects in their diet. At a time when the safety of many sources of protein -- from beef to salmon -- is being called into question, insects offer an alternative. Shrimp and lobsters, part of the same biological phylum that includes bugs, are essentially sea insects. No one thinks twice about spreading toast with honey, known among wise-cracking entomologists as "bee vomit."
"If we broadened our palate," says Gordon, "we'd have a much better time of surviving in large numbers."
Chez Tiziou, the buffet awaits. "By itself, [a cicada] doesn't have much taste, you know," he says.
He's right. His delightful parsley-and-garlic butter certainly perks up the insect's gastronomic appeal. Served plain, cicadas have more crunch than flavor.
Once they're in the mouth, the unmistakable feeling is one of anticlimax. In the end, a cicada is just another creature available for the eating. And like anything else that's been frozen for 17 years, the plain ones taste like freezer.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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