The Joys of Cooking... With Insects(Part II)

Be sure to check out Part I for pictures and descriptions of the food!

Once the dishes were cleared and the excitement had died down, we sat down with Mr. Uchiyama to help make sense of the whole situation. He was accommodating and jovial, a geyser of positive energy bubbling below his cool exterior. For his seemingly eccentric eating habits, he was more in touch with the world than all the "normal" folk living amongst Tokyo's concrete jungle.

TSB (T): How did you get started as an insect chef?

Shoichi Uchiyama (U): I grew up in Nagano where bugs were always on the menu, though not by my choice (laughs). When I moved to Tokyo with my family, my days of snacking on grasshoppers stayed behind in the countryside. Then, around 10 years ago, I happened upon a special event at the Tama Zoo featuring edible insects from around the world. That first crunchy bite brought my childhood memories flooding back to me.

Reconnecting with my youth gave my life a new direction. I practiced on my own, discovering what was delicious and what was vile by trial and error. Around 3 or 4 years ago I went public with my blog. The overwhelmingly positive reaction spurred me forward to treat this as something more than just a hobby.

T: I can’t imagine starting from scratch. What sort of failures have you produced over the years?

U: Grubs are impossible. You see them all fat and juicy and think they’d be the perfect ingredient, while in reality they just turn to mush! They spend their lives eating rotten debris underground and this diet is reflected in the taste. Trust me, grubs aren’t worth the effort.

T: Have you ever had any problems eating things that were best left under the log?

U: Most people assume that wasps and spiders are inedible because of their venom. In reality, all it takes to detoxify them is a red-hot skillet. Yes, the heat actually nullifies the poison! Blister beetles are the arsenic of insect cooking. They secrete a nasty chemical called cantharidin that you don’t want anywhere near you.

T: Your online niche is spreading into mainstream magazines and television appearances. Why the surge in popularity?

U: People have gotten sick of looking up at skyscrapers and are ready to look down at the world at their feet, to get back to their roots. Japan’s realized that it’s over-dependent on imported food, and self-sufficiency has become a real issue. If we’re farming our own vegetables, why not our own protein as well? Wasps are an excellent source of amino acids.

Think of all the food that goes to waste around you: Cicadas dying at the end of summer, grasshoppers in the fall. And stop using pesticide on wasps and ants, it makes them inedible! Exterminators could run a lucrative side business vacuuming up these so-called “pests” for resale.

T: You need a celebrity backing you to get the word out.

U: They let me go toe-to-toe with television personalities but no one takes what I’m doing seriously. The shock factor is still too great for most.

T: If herbivore men are passive, and carnivore men are aggressive, then what are insectivore men?

U: They don’t have any taboos regarding food and are interested in new things. They place a high premium on healthy living.

T: Your current venue, Yoru no Hirune, can only host around 20 people. Do you plan to expand in the future?

U: Right now we have a hothouse culture. The small membership keeps us close and our passion for what we do fuels each other’s fire. You’ll never find a more varied group. One guy is a monkey tracker, this guy hunts wild boar, and the nice lady who provided today’s cockroaches is a translator of Latin.

T: It feels like one big extended family.

U: I wish more parents would bring their children! Kids aren’t as prejudiced as adults and would be more keen to the idea of eating bugs. More zoos should hold insect-eating festivals like the one that got me started 10 years ago.

Of course, my work can only reach so many people in Japan. I’ve published a cookbook of Japanese insects, but I’d like to put out an English version tailored to the arthropods of Western countries.

T: Thanks for the grub!

The Joys of Cooking... With Insects(Part I)

So you’ve been in Japan for a while. You've taken enough pictures of shrines and temples to fill 10 Flickr accounts, you’ve sworn off the bar scene to protect your wallet and liver, and you’ve recently come to the terrible realization that the "totally awesome" local bands don’t have anything new to bring to the table. Sounds like you’re burned out. Sounds like you need to get back to nature.

Thankfully, Shoichi Uchiyama’s monthly insect cooking classroom does just that.
Our field agent Chaya reported on the group last month. This Sunday Voidmare and myself worked up the intestinal fortitude to take the plunge into entomophagy. Let me just say this: You don't know what you're missing out on.

Dried Field Grasshoppers and Argentine Cockroaches

If a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down, then perhaps it can do the same for cockroaches. Fry them up with some soy sauce and sugar and you can barely tell the difference between the scuttering pest and my favorite Japanese snack, Karinto. The seasonings mix with the bug’s own natural juices, creating a three-stage explosion of flavor that went from crispy, to sweet, and ended like melted peanut butter. The legs get stuck between your teeth, but doesn’t everything?

As lip smacking as these candied critters were, I would advise you against stir-frying the ones in your apartment. Today’s ingredients were farm raised, free of the filth and disease associated with the common roach. How you raise cockroaches, however, is the subject for another post altogether.

Sakura Caterpillar Wrapped in Toasted Mochi

These caterpillars, grown fat on sakura leaves, smell and taste like the verdant air in a grove of cherry trees. Served with sticky mochi, a hanami staple, one bite was all it took to transport us from the cold grays of winter to the vibrant green of spring. The light, salty nori was the perfect complement to the heavy, chewy mochi, and the caterpillar provided a satisfying crunch and subtle aroma. I know what I’m packing come next April.

Madagascan Cockroaches in Vinagared Vegetables

These guys look snug as a bug in a rug tucked in a blanket of vinagared carrots and daikon. Cutting open their chitinous underbelly to reveal the supple white meat underneath reminded me of shucking a lobster. Eaten by sucking out the innards and leaving the husk, much like an oyster, the texture was surprisingly rich and granulated.

Spiders in Chili Sauce and Baby Mantises with Wasabi Mayonnaise Over Fish Sausage

Most people’s initial reaction to deep fried spiders was, “Hey! I thought those were out of season!” Uchiyama, however, is hardly one to allow his culinary science to be constrained by the whims of nature. These orb weavers were harvested in the fall and frozen to be enjoyed year-round. Their brittle and pliable legs danced to oblivion on the roof of my mouth while the crispy abdomen crunched like a soft nut.

The baby mantises were likewise delectable, like spicy caviar.

Wasp Larva and Sweet Potatoes

Uchiyama’s experimentation continues to bear fruit. Who would have thought that potatoes and wasp pupa combine to taste like sweet pears? Highly recommended to those looking to offset their carbs with protein. Just be sure to remove the pupa’s colostomy bag before mashing!

Bug Cracker

A real grab-bag of goodies for your friends and co-workers. Our luxurious parting gift was gilded with wasps, silk worms, cockroaches, centipedes, and snake. For once I am thankful for Japan's omiyage culture.

The experience was akin to discovering a ginger bread house deep within a black forest. After the awful fear and trepidation you are rewarded with a sweet surprise that, of course, no one will believe. Don’t take our word for it. You owe it to yourself to attend one of Uchiyama’s sessions. When society reaches a Blade Runner-esque critical mass and we’re farming algae for food, you’ll be glad to still have a source of protein.

NEXT: Interview with chef Uchiyama.

Tokyo Spectre Brigade (1)

August in Japan means 5 things: a week off of work, ramune, watermelon, taking 4 showers a day, and GHOSTS! This posts kicks off our first in a series of 心霊スポット(haunted spots) reports.

For our first outing, we decided to go all out, visiting the abandoned Fukiage tunnels in Ome, Tokyo. According to our source on Japanese hauntings, this place is supposed to be where it's at. Unfortunately, no ghosts were there along with it.... More on that at the end of the post. Here's what we found:

The road leading to the first of two tunnels. Yes, it is still daytime.... We figured we would hit the weaker of the two tunnels during the late afternoon to build up our courage.

"Beware of female phantom"

Enter at your own peril!

One of the biggest collections of awful graffiti in Japan. The scariest thing about the tunnel was that if you stand at one end and your friend talks to you in a hushed voice from the opposite side, you can hear them as if they were behind you talking into your ear.

This is the phantom we were warned about earlier. Mineral deposits and mold vaguely resembling a woman with long black hair wearing kimono or the restless soul of a scorned woman?

Michael Jackson's new haunt? This was embedded in the wall of the tunnel, below it in the mud was a pair of women's tights.

This tunnel is over 100 years old and is imfamous as one of Japan's most haunted spots. After climbing a (small) mountain, sneaking past the Japanese version of the house from Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and trespassing on government land, we found that the city had recently sealed the place up for good. Despite DrSenbei's lackadaisical rattling of the huge padlock on the door, this pretty much brought our day to a close. Whammy!

Conclusion

If you live in the Kanto area and want a good excuse to get out of the city without having to go to another temple or shrine, this is your place. I might have sounded cynical in my captions, but the tunnel really was rather spooky and fun, ghost or no ghost. We took turns walking through it alone, and I have to admit that I kept looking over my shoulder and getting freaked out by the acoustics. That, plus knowing that I was somewhere I shouldn't be, made me feel like a kid again in the best way possible.

You can take a bus almost directly to the mountain with the tunnels, but I really recommend walking there to get the most out of the mountainside. Here is a MAP.

Ome is also famous for it's Showa era Japanese Cinema Street, where you can check out all sorts of vintage movies posters and the like. More info on that at this guy who I don't know's blog.