In a famous scene from Umezu Kazuo's Baptism, the elementary-aged protagonist, Sakura, tortures her romantic rival, the teacher’s wife, by force feeding her cockroach gruel. The image of ingesting live cockroaches via suffocation planted its horrific egg in the hospitable minds of the young female readership. And now, after gestating in the brains of it’s readers for over thirty years, the trauma hatches, and with it comes a certain craving.
We've reported on chomping bugs in the past, but never so viscerally. This short 5 part series from Mr. Uchiyama's insect cooking classroom guides you through the process of selecting, washing, frying, and garnishing your roaches.
Tasty tidbit: The Japanese word for cockroach, gokiburi, is a misspelling of the earlier form gokikaburi (御器噛り), with goki meaning "serving plate" and kaburi "to chew." Roaches are infamous for their tenacity, chowing down not only on your leftovers but on the dish it used to be on as well! If you want to know more about these living fossils, the Meguro parasite museum is running a special exhibit on them through August 26th.
I'm like a kid in a candy store!
Sheesh what an amateur... if she thinks that is how you wash a bucket of roaches she better get herself back to Grossout U. for a refresher course in hygenic entophagy.
ReplyDeleteShe's just lucky that they were fat lazy Argentine roaches and not the zippy domestic brand. The ones in my sink would never sit around for that kind of treatment.
ReplyDeleteI apologize for not commenting on the corresponding blog post, but as the Laughing Salesman videos were taken off of YouTube due to a copyright claim, do you know of anywhere else I can find them? Even legitimately, if it's possible to get them that way subtitled. I only made it through the first two and really enjoyed them, but Google is giving me no hope in finding the show again in English.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I know, the show has not been officially translated into English. That's why I started subbing them a few years ago! (Of course, I only got through a few episodes, but...)
ReplyDeleteI can dust off my hard drive and re-upload them sometime. Or, shoot us an E-mail and we can try to work something out.