Alright, it's time to ban ze meat. The "lobster of the trees" is here and we no longer need the deliciousness of beef, pork, or poultry. Time to pack it up. The New York Times says these things are delicious.
"Pretty much anything you can make with shrimp, you can make with cicadas."
Those are the words of chef Joseph Yoon, an "Edible Insect Ambassador." His business, Brooklyn Bugs, pushes the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals right on its homepage.
Chef Joseph Yoon, an Edible Insect Ambassador, is a world renowned chef and thought leader in 'entomophagy,' or eating insects, and tours around the world to share the incredible potential of not only edible insects, but the burgeoning innovation in Insect Agriculture to impact the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and address the challenges of food security, climate change, health & nutrition, workforce activation, environmentalism, and sustainability.
Let's get back to The New York Times article with its "lobsters of the sea," where we're introduced to one of Mr. Yoon's dishes.
For his ramp and cicada kimchi, he leaves the insects whole and intact in their crackling shells so they're slowly permeated with a spicy fermenting juice, and serves it with a wobble of soft tofu and warm rice. He fries cicadas to make tempura, folds sautéed cicadas into Spanish tortillas with potato and onion, and bakes cheesy casseroles with cicada-stuffed pasta shells.
In the United States, eating insects is often sensationalized, trivialized or framed as a source of cheap protein for an end-of-the-world scenario. But for about two billion people who regularly eat insects around the world, it's one of our oldest and most ordinary foods.
So a quarter of our global population are bug eaters?
I'll believe it when I see it!
Here, the NYT introduces us to another insect enthusiast:
Andrew Jack, a private chef in Chicago, cooks with grasshoppers, ants and their larvae, and other insects, but said he finds the quality of these ingredients in the United States to be extremely unpredictable.
'Yes they're high in protein, but that gets exaggerated as a talking point,' he said. Cicadas also contain fats, carbohydrates and a number of organic compounds, providing a complexity that makes them more interesting as ingredients.
The emergence is a rare opportunity for Mr. Jack to get his hands on fresh, high-quality cicadas at their peak and to see how they develop umami. He will travel to rural Wisconsin to forage, then grind cicadas down, salt the mash and let it ferment much like a shrimp paste.
Cicada paste! Doesn't that just sound delightful?
And now that they've got us all comfy with the idea of eating cicadas (I mean, two chefs are bugging out about them, so they must be good) here's the good stuff.
Did you know that you can cook cicadas at any point in their life cycle?
Here's more on the cicada's culinary properties.
When foragers choose to capture and cook cicadas during this emergence is a matter of taste and timing.
The hunched, hard-shelled, butterscotch-colored nymphs that first emerge from the ground are easy to scoop up as they scurry. Wait awhile and they burst from their little exoskeletons as soft, white-winged tenerals.
If the cicadas gathered as tenerals aren't cooked right away or put on ice, within a matter of hours they go through another growth spurt, shifting into adults. Their bodies darken and harden, and they focus on finding a mate somewhere up in the trees.
You can catch cicadas there for weeks — they sing so loudly, they're pretty hard to miss. But those who've cooked them over the years pass along one bit of advice: If you want to get a good taste, act fast. The longer you wait, the less meaty the cicadas will be.
Man, I'm so glad the NYT took some time to do the World Economic Forum's bidding.
How else would we have discovered that cicadas are just as good, if not better than, shrimp and other seafood?
Matter of fact, I'm gonna head outside right now; I think I hear some screeching in the trees and it's getting close to lunchtime.
YOU VIL EAT ZE BUGS!
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