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| Don’t dismiss the chance to throw an unusual green into spring salads; there are plenty of online recipes that include cicadas. |
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HOME > SOVO SCENE > HOMEFRONT
By: GEORGE OLIVER
COMMENTS |
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I’m grateful for my spring garden. It doesn’t project the taste or
have the space of a television gardening show, but then I don’t have behind-the-camera
helpers whacking every weed.
A garden, even a small one, takes work. But some results are worth the effort
to receive the end reward of eating greens that are springtime fresh.
I planted lettuce seeds back in early March, one of those Martha Stewart gourmet-type
mixtures that are so popular now. No tacky commercial iceberg lettuce in these
packages. The seedlings came up in a about a week, but then nothing happened
for most of the month. When we had a week of warmer weather, boom: the lettuce
hit the fan. I could almost see those loose-leaf heads growing.
Now I’m beginning to harvest leaves regularly for homegrown salads. As
I usually do this time of year, I add whatever wild things I can identify safely,
like dandelion, wild mustard, violets and red buds. My neighbor drove by one
day as I was digging out a dandelion plant and shouted, “Getting’
rid of those damn weeds, huh?”
“No,” I replied. “I’m making a salad. She gave me a
“yeah-right” laugh and drove on. They think I’m a little weird
anyway.
Lettuce, especially the loose-leaf variety, is the easiest thing to grow, harvest
and eat. It doesn’t have to have full sun and will do fine in a half barrel
on the patio. It laughs at cold, frost and even freezing temperatures.
With the plethora of beautiful and tasty seed mixtures available now, even
folks who never had luck with growing summer produce like tomatoes or eggplant
can grow lettuce with ease. Try it next spring; plant the seeds as early as
the soil is workable.
Spring is a good time for all kinds of edible green stuff. Besides homegrown,
check out the local farmers market, where you can eat the season, but make sure
it’s locally grown: spring onions, mesclun, spinach, Asian greens, asparagus
and sugar snap peas are all good choices.
But this spring, I’ve been looking for a new green in town, and it’s
got six legs. I’m speaking, of course, of our insect cousins, who can
number in the thousands. You want local and fresh? You got it. As of this writing,
I don’t know what the numbers will be in my area, but I’m waiting
with baited breath.
And I’m talking culinary considerations. Now don’t drop this paper
in disgust; try to keep your insect prejudices in check.
If you think crabs and lobsters are delicious, and you’re not turned
off by the way they look, then you have no right to gasp at a sautéed
cicada on your plate.
Do you think that the first person in beachside cooking history looked at
a crab scurrying across a sand bar and said “yum”? No, he probably
said, “ohmagod, what a hideous beast, with way too many legs and dirty,
unfashionable armor.”
If he was gay, he might have also mused on its possible use as a campy cave
latrine decoration. If he then decided it might be good to eat, he was either
very adventurous or very hungry.
Now in the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t actually eaten a cicada
yet, so I had to go online to see what cooking techniques are recommended. I
suspected that, like with crabs and lobsters, a mature creature might be too
hard, but how do you crack a cicada, and is there much to eat inside?
Since I planned to surprise my upcoming luncheon friends with some, I was also
stumped as to what wine you might serve with cicadas. A Riesling seems appropriate,
but who knows?
Here’s the bottom line that I learned from my research: cooking options
include stir-frying, roasting and deep frying. But ideally, don’t catch
a mature cicada and throw it in to a hot oiled pan with some ginger. Get them
when they’ve just molted, white and still soft. It’s kind of like
soft-shell crabs where you eat the whole animal.
Suffice it to say that I’m looking forward to trying them, if I can find
enough molting ones where I live. If you’re lucky enough to have them
where you live, there are a number of recipes online if you’re interested.
It’s a change from the usual eight-legged ocean arachnids to six-legged
tree-hugging insects. Anyway, it’s not my fault you didn’t grow
any lettuce.
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