Fat-bottomed ants, you make the rocking world go round
Ingesting invertebrates might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but, for naturalist John Wright, ants, woodlice and grasshoppers are the lesser of two weevils
Ingesting invertebrates might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but, for naturalist John Wright, ants, woodlice and grasshoppers are on the menu
IHAVE started to eat ants. Not many and not often, but I do eat them and quite like them. I learned all about ant collecting and eating from my friend and fellow forager Thomas Laursen. It is he who supplies ants to the restaurant Noma, in Copenhagen, that temple to odd food.
We were jointly leading a wild-food foray in Jutland when we came across a huge mounded nest in a pine forest, crawling with fat wood ants. He placed his hand flat on the nest and ants swarmed all over it. A woman asked if they were stinging him. ‘A little,’ he said with studied nonchalance.
He proceeded to eat a few before offering them around. I tried some and was surprised to find they tasted strongly of lemons, no doubt from the acid in their sting.
Later, we found a different species that tasted of oranges. This was all very interesting, but I was more curious about the reaction of our guests to what Thomas had done. Most of the women present were clearly impressed with this tall and handsome huntergather and most of the men (including me) felt threatened by this ugly brute, who was clearly making his alpha-male move. We’re such basic creatures when returned to our natural habitat.
The chimpanzees, our nearest relatives, are very fond of insects. Studies of their diets show that much of their protein is of insect origin, chiefly termites and ants. Insects were once an important part of our diet, too, and, in many cultures, still are. Not so in the West—it’s surprising how revolted we can be at the thought of eating creepy-crawlies when we cheerfully eat prawns and raw oysters. Insect-eating or, rather, terrestrial invertebrate-eating, has become a tele-visual spectator sport, but it’s disgust that provides the entertainment. Although, in recent years, there has been a worrying loss of sheer insect biomass (have you noticed how few insects get splattered on your windscreen these days?), they still dominate, with a ‘stocking density’ greater than that of sheep or cattle. The high protein levels and aminoacid profiles of insects make them the perfect food and collecting insects might take pressure off a countryside that’s largely a biological wasteland, supplying feed for housed pigs, cattle and chickens. Quite how we’ll achieve such a transformation, however, are details I will leave to greater minds. Perhaps, however, it’s an opportune time for entomophagy to become mainstream. Inspired by a new book, Insects: an Edible Field Guide by Stefan Gates, I decided to blaze this unlikely trail and extend my range beyond ants. Stefan’s book is a practical, interesting and endlessly amusing guide that describes edible species from all over the world, including Northern Europe. Definitely something to slip into the backpack. I started in the garden by collecting woodlice from under a pile of bricks. Stefan suggests using them as a replacement for prawns in a prawn cocktail—they are both crustaceans, after all. This seemed ambitious, so I just boiled a dozen or so for two minutes and ate them. Well, I tried to eat them, but they were utterly tasteless and had the texture of the glass cover-slips used in microscopy. Undeterred by this setback, I bought a rather splendid butterfly net. I asked my daughter to hold it out of the window as we drove along, to catch any airborne insects that might look tasty. Perhaps it was the wrong time of day, but only half a dozen tiny creatures
‘It’s surprising how revolted we can be at creepy-crawlies when we eat prawns’
were caught after five miles. We gave up. Success came with a dusk excursion to a local meadow. Sporting a headlight to attract my prey, I swept the enormous white net to and fro through the air and the uncut grass. The net soon buzzed, swarmed and crawled with hundreds of small flies, moths, lacewings, spiders, beetles and grasshoppers. The naturalist in me wanted to rush them all home for identification, but I just settled on the grasshoppers as being the most promising for the pot and put them in a plastic bottle. I tried one raw and alive. It tasted of mushy peas with a crunchy coating. I liked it.
Stefan recommends cooking everything, to neutralise toxins and bacteria and to improve flavour. The Maillard reaction is the happy consequence of heating amino acids and reducing sugars, which gives browned meat, roast potatoes and toast their distinctive flavour. It works especially well with insects because of their large surface area. My sautéed grasshoppers were a nutty,
umami delight, although they’re not the easiest of food items to handle. They jump. Considerably less trouble to find, catch and handle are garden snails. I have been assured by several people I trust that they are better than escargots. Purging is necessary for most invertebrates before they can be eaten, so I consigned half a dozen snails from the end of the garden to a closed plastic box for four days. I had no idea how to cook snails, so I treated them like winkles and boiled them for 20 minutes then cracked open the shell.
The worst thing you can do when planning to eat a mollusc is to look at it. At all. My courage failed and I just nibbled a few of the less disgusting looking bits. No doubt, an experienced snail-chef would have made a vastly better job of the whole thing, but there was no flavour at all. Snails are off my menu.
Despite the limited success of these experiments, I will continue my quest. I’ve always wondered if the fat, white grubs that munch their way through planks of beech wood might be tasty. And I don’t think the net/car idea was altogether bad.
Once, while mushroom hunting near Loch Lomond, my party was nearly consumed by midges. By way of payback, I plan to attach a large, framed net to the top of my pickup and drive it slowly around the Loch. Thousands of midges will accumulate thickly at the bottom and could be scraped off to make midge-burgers.
Indeed, Stefan recommends midges for just this purpose. I’ve bought the net and plan to visit a loch or two in September. I’ll keep you informed.
In the meantime, I’ll give earthworm stirfry a miss, but will look out for common cockchafers, enormous creatures that sound like an approaching Chinook helicopter and are, according to Stefan, good in soup.
And, of course, I will continue to eat ants and grasshoppers—if only because it impresses the girls.
‘The worst thing you can do when planning to eat a mollusc is to look at it. At all’