Served: Weird News About Food (Cicadas)

"Cicada invasion: If you can't beat them, eat them"

"Brood II is good for you. It just takes 17 years to prepare. Bun Lai, owner of Miya’s Sushi in New Haven, Conn., and one of the city’s best known chefs, has a few gastronomic plans for the bumper crop of periodical cicadas expected to emerge along the Eastern seaboard in a couple of weeks. He’ll be cooking up batches of the critters for himself and possibly for certain, select customers.
“I plan to get a big freezer for them,” said Lai, who has become famous for introducing local palates to insects and invasive plant species. “I’m going to catch a whole bunch of them and preserve them for future eating. I plan on eating a whole bunch of them myself.”

Perhaps billions of 17-year cicadas — the Brood II group, to be specific — soon will emerge from their underground homes, climb nearby trees and transform from nymphs into big, hard-shelled, winged creatures with red eyes.

They’ll engage in a rather ostentatious courtship ritual for a few weeks after that, with the male cicadas creating an incredibly loud mating call thanks to handy personal amplifiers called tymbals.

They’ll be above ground for about five weeks before the adults die off and the 17-year life cycle begins again. “I’m definitely considering the possibility of including them in some thematic dinners I do,” Lai said. “Insects are far healthier for our bodies than eating meat.”

There are seven species of periodical cicadas. Three of them live on a 17-year cycle and four species have a 13-year cycle. Their year of emergence is staggered into broods, with Connecticut on the northern edge of Brood II.

Along with the intense public fascination over the creatures comes a healthy curiosity about people who are willing to eat cicadas. There are a fair number of these folks, actually. They even create recipes with cicadas, everything from tacos and cookies to dumplings and pizza.

Aficionados report that the meatier, young female cicadas taste best. They also note that cultures such as the Native American Iroquois tribe in upstate New York considered cicadas a delicacy. That makes perfect sense to Lai, whose repertoire includes Mexican grasshoppers, spiced Asian shore crabs and fried rice with meal worms and crickets.

But he’ll be doing something slightly different with the cicadas. “I don’t want to take something that’s inherently nutritious and deep fry it,” he explained. “If I’m going to interrupt this amazing, 17-year life cycle, I’m going to honor it and respect it.”

For example, Lai is going to steam some cicadas with ground spices and herbs — in a fashion similar to the way Maryland crabs are prepared. He’s also going to do a cicada boil with spices and herbs. “The challenge is to take an ingredient that’s abundant and nourishing and make it appealing to people,” he said. “I’m not trying to gross people out. I’m not running a frat house. I respect the cicada.”

This story is courtesy of the New Haven Register