Yummy yucky
Love is never lost for pizza even through a raging coronavirus pandemic, let alone a raging volcano.
Enterprising David Garcia, in fact, keeps the “lava” for pizza alive with his latest offerings.
The 34-year-old serves
pizza baked on lava coming out of the Pacaya volcano in Guatemala. He wears protective clothing at his mountainside kitchen where the heat reaches 1,000 degrees Celsius.
Locals and tourists watching the volcano which has been erupting since February also enjoy eating Garcia’s Pacaya Pizza. Such daring diners and their selfies do make for a viral spectacle.
Just as exciting as eating lava-cooked pizza is trying the same treat dished out by a vending machine in Rome, Italy.
The Mr. Go Pizza vendo, the only one of its kind in the country that is located outside a shopping mall and operates 24/7, started serving freshly-baked pizza last 6 April.
Customers can watch through its glass window the automatic kneading, topping and baking of the dough. The pizza comes in four flavors priced from 4.50 to 6 euros.
Mr. Go Pizza captured the night shift workers market for its convenience, but also earned unsavory comments as its small serving looks more like a piadina.
For the more adventuresome gastronomes, there is a new challenging eat to try. The nature-inspired recipes for a protein-rich and low-fat delicacy are now available at a candy store and was offered at a recent food festival in the US.
ChouQuette Chocolates & Confections in Bethesda, Maryland sell chocolate-coated cicada as trillions of the chirping insects are emerging from underground in the East Coast after a 17-year hibernation to mate and reproduce.
Last 29 May, the Cicadafest was held at the Green Farmacy Garden, a medicinal-plant sanctuary and educational garden in Fulton, Maryland. Foodies at the event were introduced to air-fried, skewered and roasted cicadas.
Jessica Fanzo, the director of Johns Hopkins’ Global Food Ethics and Policy Program, already tried the recipes at home. She described the taste of roasted cicadas as a crunchy nut.
There was also a cicada cooking and tasting demonstration at the Oregon Ridge Nature Center in Cockeysville, Maryland on 27 May. Those who ate fried cicadas described its taste as similar to fried oysters.
Washington chef Bun Lai rolled fried cicadas into sushi at his own cicada cooking demo held in Fort Totten Park. Other East Coast chefs came up with their own cicada recipes.
Two-year-old Baday Tapang of Surigao del Norte has a snack that is tastier than cicada. Others will agree after watching the girl’s viral video showing her happily chewing and sucking the sweet milky juice of her favorite “candy.”
Of the more than three million viewers of the video posted by Baday’s parents on her YouTube channel, perhaps none can match her appetite for the coconut worms that live inside dead trunks of coconut trees. She can solo finish a plateful of the Asian weevil larva while few can stomach eating dozens of fat, wiggling worms resembling maggots. Ew.