I'm not a big believer in fate but ten minutes before first seeing these things for sale I'd been sat researching another blog post online and seen them mentioned. Surely it was menat to be?
Normally I like a beer or two inside me before trying something random, a bit of Ducth courage, but I was stone cold sober here and these are pretty horrid looking. It's hard to see from the photo just how big these things are, they're literally 7cm/8cm long and 3cm/4cm across, a giant waterboatmen literally half the size of my palm. I gestured to the stallholder how to prepare them and she snapped off the eyes and the two wing covers and handed it back.
Whilst the first bugs we'd eaten were crisp these things had a very soft middle. First bite caused the mouth to be filled by a big squirt of fishy tasting gunk. It wasn't actually that bad though, I'd read that they squeeze these over dishes sometimes and I can see how you consider their essence a delicacy. The texture was very heavy going though, nothing wanted to break down. I kept chewing and chewing on leathery shell and spiky leg for a good 5 minutes, refusing to be beaten, and in the end I broke down the shell enough to swallow it. These things are not for the faint of heart.
Do they definitely swallow them or is this like chicken claws where one sucks the stuff out/ off and then spits out the leftover?
Posted by: Kavey | July 17, 2009 at 05:40 PM
Heh, heh, Josh! That description sounds just like my encounter with the canned silkworm pupa I tried. Gooey sludge insides and hard, resistant exoskeleton do not make a good meal, I think. I spat the thing out and threw away the rest of the can. Why in the world they took the trouble to import the things from Korea into the USA, I do not know. Maybe something to do with a taste of home!
Posted by: TexasTitch | July 25, 2009 at 02:00 PM