COVER
ABOUT THE BOOK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
INTRODUCTION
UK AND NORTHERN EUROPE
1. Meadow grasshopper
2. Water boatman
3. Highland midges
4. Giant house spider
5. Greater wax moth larvae
6. Black soldier fly
7. Black garden ant
8. Speckled bush cricket
9. Common cockchafer
10. Earthworms
11. Common woodlouse
12. Mealworms
SOUTHERN EUROPE
1. Cheese mites
2. June beetle
3. Mayflies
4. European red wood ant
5. Roman snail
6. Sea slater
7. European mantis
8. Cheese fly maggots
9. Mediterranean termite
AFRICA
1. Melon bug oil
2. Jewel Beetles
3. Lake midges
4. Emperor moth caterpillars
5. Bagworm moth pupae
6. Mopane worm
7. Hissing cockroach
8. Palm weevil larvae
9. Nsenene long-horned grasshoper
10. Ndoko
ASIA
1. Locusts
2. Honey bees
3. Giant water bug
4. Silkworm pupae
5. Caterpillar fungus
6. Shellac
7. Red ants
8. Bamboo worms
9. Rhinoceros beetles
10. Black ants
11. Dung beetles
12. Centipede
13. Scorpion
14. Hornets and wasps
SOUTH AMERICA
1. Honey
2. Fat-arsed ants
3. Honey wasp
4. Dobsonflies
5. Cochineal
6. Lemon ants
7. Dragonfly
8. White June bug
9. Tarantula
NORTH AMERICA
1. Maguey worms
2. Ahuahutle
3. Cottontree worm
4. Cicada
5. Pandora moth
6. Stink bugs
7. Escamoles
8. Grasshoppers
9. Crickets
10. Chapulines
OCEANIA/JAPAN/PACIFIC
1. Bogong moths
2. King Christmas beetle larvae
3. Lerp
4. Witchetty grub
5. Honeybag
6. Honeypot ants
7. Stick insects
8. Huhu grub
9. Zaza-mushi
10. Bardi grub
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
COPYRIGHT
Happy though I am to take all the credit for this book, I must grudgingly admit to the tiniest bit of help from dozens of brilliant entomologists, anthropologists, climate-change scientists, naturalists, statisticians, cooks and food writers whose work, both current and historical, I consulted, tickled and plundered. Special mention must go the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation for its publications and sheer enthusiasm, and also to the late Gene DeFoliart (whose extraordinary online bibliography is something of a gateway drug into entomophagy).
Particularly sumptuous acknowledgements are due to several people: the wonderful Hugh Woodward, whose efforts are reflected not just in the depth of information herein, but in some very fine turns of phrase, and for keeping me sane when I should, by rights, have gone stark raving locust. My entomologist friend Sally-Ann Spence kept the book in check and on track, and let me fiddle with Darwin’s specimens at the Pitt-Rivers in Oxford. A huge thank-you to the fantastic Jessica Barnfield for suggesting this book and for editing it so well despite being a vegetarian. And a big thank you to Candela Riveros for her wonderful illustrations.
Many people are to blame for leading me on the path to entomophagic enlightenment, especially Daisy and Poppy (for the day they licked their fingers, dipped them into a jar of bug eggs and pronounced them ‘delicious’), Georgia Glynn Smith (who, let’s be honest, struggles to love insects), Kari Lia, Nik Porter, Nipaporn “Jam” Potong, Mark Collins, Will Daws, Karen O’Connor, Richard Klein, Clare Paterson, Cassian Harrison, Janice Hadlow, Jan Croxson, Borra Garson, the crazy tarantula boys of Cambodia, Brodie Thompson and Eliza Hazlewood.
Thanks to my beloved BBC – and the great British public for funding them – for sharing so many of my fascinations and obsessions.
And finally, thanks to all the ants, bugs, locusts, grubs, worms, spiders, gastropods and myriapods I’ve met on the way to writing this book. Sorry for eating you. But let’s face it, if I didn’t, something else would.
You might think that the entomophagy-minded foodie would find slim pickings in northern Europe. After all, the region is colder than most, whereas insects thrive in warm climates. This can make insect-foraging a calorie-neutral or even calorie-negative endeavour, (whereby more energy is spent collecting your dinner than you gain from eating it). Much like munching on celery. And, yes, in terms of sheer number of species Europe ranks last in the league table of edible insects, with only 2% of the world’s commonly eaten species.
But there are two counter-arguments to offer sceptics.
1. Insects are tenacious little critters and are found everywhere, especially in summer, as long as you know where to look and what to look for (and you have this book to hand). It’s usually possible to walk into any garden that isn’t under a blanket of snow and find a mouthful of protein.
2. The future of the world. Europe has always been at the forefront of global culinary endeavour, largely due to the work of the Dutch, who have been extracting food from an unpromising patch of mud since at least the Reformation. And with some degree of inevitability, they have thrown their weight behind entomophagy as an important solution to the world’s food problems.
The Dutch are farming organic mealworms and crickets for human consumption, and the good folk at Wageningen University produce some brilliant entomophagy research. Big ideas that change global nutrition often sound a bit odd and distasteful at first. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to change the world by changing what we eat.
Some of the most exciting developments in entomophagy have come from the most surprising places. Despite a climate that doesn’t naturally lend itself to cold-blooded animals, northern Europe has developed a pleasing proportion of the world’s oddest insect dishes. Check off the ones you’ve tried.
• 1. Bee mayonnaise, Denmark.
• 2. Cockchafer soup, France.
• 3. Fly burgers, Malawi/Tanzania.
• 4. Mealworm ice cream, San Francisco, USA.
• 5. Christmas minced flies, London, UK.
(Admittedly, that last entry was one of your author’s.)
The meadow grasshopper is known for its call; it attracts attention by rubbing its legs together and adding a scratchy noise to the general cacophony of a field on a summer’s evening. The grasshopper is particularly good at hopping because its strong back legs act as tiny catapults – it bends its legs at the knee so that a spring-like mechanism stores up energy, then, when the grasshopper is ready to jump, it relaxes the leg muscles, allowing the spring to release and flinging it stylishly into the air. Despite this, they are very easy to catch when out in the open or on short grass, but in the middle of fields they invariably disappear into the vegetation, never to be seen again.
Taste: When freshly cooked they are crunchy and nutty with a strong umami hit.
Country: Found throughout the UK and much of Europe.
Habitat: In the wild the meadow grasshopper lives in damp pastures and meadows, spending its time merrily chirruping and feeding on leaves.
Dangers: They have no sting or venom and are no threat to humans.
How to cook/prep: Best roasted or deep-fried.
The water boatman spends its days leisurely rowing across ponds with its oar-like legs, eating algae and bits of vegetable detritus (which makes it unusual among its mostly carnivorous pond peers). But its most impressive skill is the ability to sing with its penis. Yes, you read that right: it’s a penis-singer. It achieves this by rubbing the penis against its abdomen. The volume is spectacularly high, ranking as the loudest creature relative to its size. It has no teeth and instead dissolves its chosen morsel with its saliva before sucking up the resulting mush using its straw-like mouth. To survive underwater it has developed the ingenious technique of bringing a tiny air bubble under with it, tucked under its wing cases like a primitive scuba diver. Backswimmers (a similar species) are popular in Thailand and are eaten in soups or salted to make a dish known as jom. Water boatmen are also eaten in Mexico, both the adults and their eggs.
Taste: The eggs are quite the delicacy in Mexico, where they are known as ‘Mexican caviar’. The adults on the other hand are slightly crablike.
Country: Widely spread throughout the UK.
Habitat: Happiest living their vegetarian existence in weedy ponds and rivers.
Dangers: Some species of backswimmer can bite, so do be careful.
How to cook/prep: Can be roasted, fried or boiled.
Although they have a tiny wingspan of 1mm, these are the most bloodthirsty of Scotland’s 40 species of midge; the highland midge has a fearsome reputation as one of the UK’s most annoying insects, scourge of camping trips and harbinger of itchy misery. The female of the species tends to be the one that goes for us and extracts her dinner by making minute cuts on our skin and then happily lapping away at the pool of blood. They release a chemical that stops the blood from clotting, meaning they can merrily gorge themselves before flying off and leaving us itchy and cross. Nobody is spared, even those of royal blood – Queen Victoria grumbled in her 1872 diary that she was ‘half devoured’ by the pests. In Africa midges are harvested and pressed into solid blocks called a kunga cake. It’s time to turn the tables on our Scottish insects and do the same.
Taste: Slightly nutty and a little musty. Once mushed into a cake and then crumbled into food they add an umami richness (like Parmesan cheese taste without the cheesiness) to stews and soups.
Country: Widespread in north Wales and Scotland.
Habitat: Rarely if ever farmed – people generally try to avoid them. Your best chance of gathering a midge harvest would be going out at dusk or dawn with a very fine net and possibly a torch and using yourself as bait. Or copy the east African method of wetting a frying pan with oil so that the midges stick to it when waved through a swarm. This works remarkably well.
Dangers: None known.
How to cook/prep: Gather as many as you can and press them into a cake. Make burgers with it, or dry it out and grate parts of it off into stews.
The giant house spider isn’t an insect, and it’s not even that giant in the ranking of massive arachnids, generally reaching 18mm in body length (but with proportionally long legs – up to 75mm, in males). Despite having shared homes with humanity for millennia they are relatively shy, preferring to make their funnel-shaped webs in dark undisturbed places and then sit and wait for prey. Cushy job? Not really. From July to October the males can be seen prowling the house looking for a mate, but after spending a few delicious weeks with their main squeeze she usually eats him. The babies are called spiderlings, which makes them sound quite sweet – until you see around 60 emerging from each egg sac. They are one of the world’s speediest spiders, managing to scuttle at speeds of up to 1.18 mph.
Taste: Let’s be honest here: the eating experience is mainly crunch and funky-tasting juice, but there’s a savoury protein punch from a plate of them, and when scattered with salt they make a wonderful snack.
Country: Very widely spread all across the UK.
Habitat: Happiest inside the home in quiet crannies where they have both access to lots of prey and isolation from meddlesome humans and their stinky pets.
Dangers: Like all spiders, they do produce venom to stun their prey but are unlikely to bite humans, much preferring to run away. The venom is invariably neutralised by cooking.
How to cook/prep: Wash, dry and deep-fry. Drain on paper, toss in salt and paprika and serve.
The greater wax moth’s larvae, or waxworms, are a beekeeper’s worst nightmare, gobbling away at impurities in the wax in honeybee hives and causing a huge amount of damage to the eventual honey yield. They can even eat the heads of bee pupae. But let’s not damn them too early – the larvae are incredibly useful as pet feed and are also used in scientific experiments, not to mention being rather scrummy to humans. In their book Entertaining With Insects, or: The Original Guide to Insect Cookery, Ronald L. Taylor and Barbara J. Carter describe the larvae as ‘thin-skinned, tender, and succulent. They would appear to lend themselves to commercial exploitation as snack items. When dropped into hot vegetable oil, the larvae immediately swell, elongate and then burst. The resulting product looks nothing like an insect, but rather like popcorn’. Just beware of chip-pan fires.
Taste: Often reared on a diet of bran and honey, when roasted or sautéed they taste like a cross between pine nuts and enoki mushrooms, but also very fatty.
Country: Found all over Europe.
Habitat: They are happy anywhere with an adequate supply of food, but the larvae really do love bees’ nests. They are widely available commercially as food for geckos and other reptiles.
Dangers: Harmless if properly cooked.
How to cook/prep: Sautéed or roasted (after popping in the freezer for half an hour to send them to sleep).
The black soldier fly tries to make itself look fearsome by pretending to be a wasp; it has opaque patches on its middle to give the appearance of the pinched waist of its distant stinging cousin. These flies make excellent eating as larvae (though you can eat the adults too). The larvae are a protein-rich (42% protein) dinner for all sorts of animals and are farmed for animal feed as they are highly efficient at converting vegetation to protein. And for humans? Well, a prototype tabletop domestic farm contraption created by an Austrian designer managed to breed 500g of larvae for human consumption in two weeks. They are industrious little things, adept at breaking down waste into compost and highly efficient at reproducing from a small amount of food. They can even thrive on human faeces (which doesn’t sound particularly appealing). You can often spot them lurking around cowpats, but in fact the adults have no functioning mouth – they spend their time searching for mates, not eating.
Taste: When cooked the larvae smell like potatoes and the taste is nutty and meaty.
Country: Found throughout the UK.
Habitat: Nooks and crannies around decomposing waste and manure. They are hard to forage on any sort of scale – you really need to catch a few adults to start a domestic larvae farm colony. There is a commercial market for these flies (for fish and pet food and animal feed), for which they are grown in huge tanks called worm bins.
Dangers: They have no sting or venom and are no threat to humans.
How to cook/prep: Roast or stir-fry.
The most common variety of ant found in the UK, these are ingenious insects with a complex hierarchy and interesting behaviour. They usually farm certain species of aphid, offering them protection in exchange for a sugary secretion the aphids give off called honeydew, which the ants find utterly delicious. The worker ants are often found swarming around soft fruits and other sweet things and are all female, numbering around 5,000 per colony. The lazy males don’t work and are only produced for the flying season when they and the young virgin queens of the species take their magnificent nuptial flight to form new colonies, where the queens can live for a whopping 15 years. The males are less lucky, dropping dead a few days after landing.
Taste: The adults taste pleasantly zesty as they, like many ants, contain formic acid (from the Latin word for ant, ‘formica’) for use as a defence mechanism when threatened. Their light crunchy texture is satisfyingly toothsome.
Country: Widespread across the UK, northern Europe and parts of north America and Asia.
Habitat: A queen can make a new nest anywhere, from ordinary soil to cracks in pavements. The worker ants can be found far and wide as they explore extensively during the summer months to look for new food supplies. It’s easy to catch them by offering something sweet such as a piece of fruit, and shaking them off it into a container.
Dangers: Lasius niger are harmless and will be safe to eat after roasting.
How to cook/prep: Best eaten simply roasted with salt.
