Locust menus delight diners

Press, 26 June 1987, Page 23

Locust menus delight diners

NZPA-Reuter Washington Gaye Williams likes them deep-fried in a cayenne pepper sauce. Don Sudbrink serves them in teriyaki and tacos.

Peter Kranz, after removing their heads, eats them raw.

The object of their gastronomic affection is a species of locust, or cicada, now moulting, mating, blanketing trees and shrubs, and stirring revulsion among most humans in the eastern United States after a 17-year underground slumber. The world’s loudest bug, whose appearance and singsong din repulse many, is for some an Epicurean delight. “These are clean-living animals,” said Ms Williams, an entomologist with the state of Maryland’s Agriculture Department. “They are a good source of energy and protein, and reasonably easy to digest. “Except for the skins.”

Ms Williams and other cicada connoisseurs are taking advantage of the brief — and rare — appearance of the billions of cicadas to extend their

taste horizons. The 3.7 cm-long insects known as Magicicada septendecim to entomologists began emerging from subterranean refuges in late May and now can be seen and heard throughout a vast triangular area between New York, Georgia and Illinois. Scientists estimate that several million cicadas can cluster in a single acre.

The insects seen swirling through treetops today were conceived in 1970. They lay underground as nymphs for almost 17 years, sucking sap from tree roots. Then this year they dug out, shed their outer skin and emerged with bulging red eyes, six legs, red-trimmed wings and protruding abdomens. This species of cicada is distinguished by its incubation period, the longest known to science, and the humming noise it makes by means of a vibrating abdominal membrane. The mass cicada cacaphony, which can drown out conversation, will soon be gone. Once the males, whose clamour is presumed to be a mating plea, join

with their silent female partners, they die. The females lay as many as 600 eggs in small slits they cut in tree twigs, then die themselves. The cicadas’ lives above ground last for barely four weeks and will end — to the great relief of most who have been deafened and dive-bombed by the bugs — by early July.

But those with cicada sweet-tooths are busy conducting culinary experiments while they can. Peter Kranz, a paleontologist and part-time science teacher in Washington schools, said he has served cicadas to hundreds of students.

“Most kids say they taste like french fries, popcorn and chicken,” said Mr Kranz, who covers sauteed cicadas with cinnamon for breakfast and with garlic and butter later in the day. Others say they tasted like shrimp or soft-shell crabs. “I’ve never had anybody get sick, feel badly or have difficulty with | them once they get them in their mouths,” said Douglass Miller, from the United States Agriculture Department’s Systematic

Entomology Laboratory. Although there is disagreement among scientists on the point, some claim cicadas are low in cholesterol.

Gaye Williams says newly hatched cicadas make the best eating. She uses a flashlight to find tender morsels on trees at night. “They are not crunchy yet,” she said.

Dead cicadas now accumulating on suburban lawns should be avoided because, Ms Williams says, they cause “bacteriological problems.” She also discards males, explaining, “Their abdomens are hollow and taste like peanut shells.” Kranz said people never reject cicada dishes on taste grounds, only on the “notion” they have of the insects.

Ingenuity may yet find a way to prolong the taste-testing spree of cicada devotees after this infestation ends. Ms Williams said she knows an entrepreneur who hopes to freeze large numbers of the insects and sell them to restaurants after this year’s brood has passed.