Jiminy Cricket! Bugs on the menu
Hungry? How about a nice plate of cricket cavatelli, a pasta dish featuring smoked crickets and mealworms?
Part and Parcel chef Grant Gard is adding it to his Quadra Village eatery’s menu Thursday through Sunday for diners willing to expand their culinary horizons.
He’s one of six Victoria chefs who stepped up to the plate when the producers of Bugs on the Menu invited them to live up to the title of their documentary premièring Friday at Vic Theatre.
While most of us would rather hear crickets chirping at night than eat them, the film, produced by Mark Bradley and directed by Ian Toews, focuses on how insects are tasty, a great alternative source of protein and a potential solution to food security issues.
Restaurateurs, cricket farmers, scholars, scientists and entrepreneurs encourage normalizing insect-eating in the West, noting bugs are already being eaten by two billion people worldwide.
“Bugs are definitely new to me, and haven’t been on my [cooking] radar,” admits Gard, whose first batch was “super-crumbly” because he usually uses semolina flour, not cricket powder.
Big Wheel Burger chef Jason Ducklow created a critter fritter burger, a veggie burger-like fusion of chickpeas, cauliflower and whole roasted crickets.
Ducklow said incorporating crickets was less a flavour challenge than one of perception.
“You can bury cricket-flour in almost anything,” he said, adding the sight of a roasted cricket can elicit shrieks.
“It tastes just like a roasted nut or seed, but cricket flour is along the lines of cocoa powder.”
Other insect-inspired dishes on local menus include punaise terrine at Choux Choux Charcuterie, orange ricotta cricket pancakes at Clay Pigeon, Origin Bakery’s hearty bug nut brown bread and a caramel cricket crunch sorbet from OLO Restaurant chef Brad Holmes.
Bug-eyed filmgoers can also sample “Hopcorn” — or “crushed critters,” as Victoria Film Festival’s Fulya Ozkul playfully describes the spicy cricket-powder and popcorn mixture.
The filmmakers will appear opening night, along with David George Gordon, Seattle’s “Bug Chef”. Samples of insect-inspired dishes will be available.
Toews travelled to South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Holland, Mexico and Cambodia during his two-year filmmaking odyssey. It included interviews with caterpillar and grasshopper harvesters, visits to markets that sell termites and locusts, and companies such as Ontario’s Entomo Farms and Boston’s insect-chip company Six Foods.
North Americans unknowingly consume one kilogram of insects each year, the flim makers say. There are 75 or more insect fragments per 50 grams of cocoa beans, for instance.
While attitudes are changing, Bradley admits it’s still an uphill climb. “Some people were freaked out and disgusted,” he said, recalling the reaction to free mealworm and cricket “treats” they handed out before the film’s world première at Edmonton’s Northwest fest.