The women moved swiftly among us as the various dishes were ready, and we helped ourselves with our fingers and cheap metal spoons. While the men ladled a sweet, milky, home-brewed rice whisky into a cup that was passed from hand to hand.
I asked why the gas stove I’d purchased for the house wasn’t being used. Gas was dangerous, my Thai family said; the tank of propane connected umbilically to the stove was, rightly, regarded as a potential bomb. Besides, the women said, they preferred to cook over fuel they knew, trusted and could see.
Thus, wood smoke is now for me and tens of millions more living in Thailand’s countryside, the first sizzling scent of the day, as much a part of the dawning as the rooster’s cry, an essential prelude to a steaming bowl of rice soup, or grilled chicken, or, during the rainy season when the rice paddies flood, plump frog.
On the Eat-a-Bug Trail in Bangkok
When visiting Thailand, go see the Grand Palace and spend an hour in a longtailed boat touring the river and canals. Visit the Jim Thompson House and take in an evening’s ritualistic brutality at one of the city’s kickboxing stadiums. Explore a dazzling Buddhist temple or Brahman shrine and be sure to get a traditional Thai massage. And by all means, go shopping.
Then eat some of the people’s food: insects.
Admittedly, it’s not for everyone. When my daughter, Erin, a first grade teacher in California, visited me in Bangkok and I suggested she try some of the deep-fried crickets, grasshoppers, beetles, silkworm larva and scorpions commonly sold on the street, she said, “Dad, you’re more adventurous than I am. I won’t eat anything that’s cute or disgusting.”
She was talking about what the creatures looked like when alive. Dogs and rabbits were cute, so she wouldn’t eat them, and insects were disgusting. She was unmoved when I quoted an eighteenth century writer, Jonathan Swift, who said it was “a brave man who first ate an oyster.”
“Look,” I went on, without result, “you eat lobster and crab, don’t you? They’re pretty ugly. And when you think about it, chickens are weird looking, too.”
The truth is, I told my daughter, who was beginning to wander off to look at the counterfeit designer jeans on offer nearby, insects are eaten in much of the world, and not just as a quirky treat—like the chocolate-covered ants I ate when I was in college—or for lack of money or anything else to eat. In Asia, Africa and Latin America, insects are not merely endured but enjoyed. In parts of southern Africa when the mopane “worms”—caterpillars, really—come into season, the sale of animal meat actually drops.
And, I went on like a professor whose class you wish would end, the cattle industry is destroying the environment. Rain forests are being torn down to create grazing land. Did you know, I asked, that nearly all the soy grown is to feed livestock? And that according to the World Bank, the average cow in Europe was subsidized to the tune of US$2.50 a day? Besides that, insects were higher in protein and lower in fat. United Nations studies in Africa and Mexico showed insects had seventy percent protein, compared to fifteen per cent in steak.
My daughter said, “Um-hum.” She now had her eye on some “cool” sunglasses.
That doesn’t happen in Thailand, I went on. But of all the places in the world—even in Colombia, where there is a statue of an ant in recognition of its place in the local diet—nowhere outside Thailand were insects prepared and consumed with such year-round regularity and delight. I explained that most of the insects consumed were eaten in the northeastern region, called Isan, and that when residents of this area migrated to Bangkok looking for work they brought their cuisine with them. Yes, I said, it was true that Isan was the poorest region of Thailand, but even when the migrant workers had money in their pockets, they returned faithfully to the insect vendors.
I admitted that there were some insects I had trouble with at first. One was the giant water bug because it looked like a cockroach. Then one day when I met a Thai friend at an outdoor beer bar she had a bag of them. I knew my moment of truth had come.
“Have one,” she said. It wasn’t a question. So she showed me how to pick off the head and legs and peel away the carapace to get to the abdominal sack which much to my surprise contained a kernel of delight. Not only did it taste good, its fragrance was such that I learned it was routinely pounded in a mortar with garlic and chilis and fish sauce for use as a spicy dip for other foods. I bought a sack and said, “Erin, you’ve got to try one. You’ll really love it. You used to like boiled peanuts when we lived in Hawaii. This tastes sort of like boiled cashews, with a bit of fishy aftertaste. And it smells like flowers.”
“Dad,” she groaned, “are you trying to make me sick?”
So I let a couple of days pass before taking her to a restaurant called Bane Lao in Bangkok’s Sukhumvit district, a place as its name implies where the cuisine of Laos is lovingly prepared and served.
“Oh, look,” I said, after we’d been seated, “they have ant egg salad.”
My daughter rolled her eyes and laughed. “You don’t give up, do you?”
I pointed to another dish on the menu. “Okay,” I said, “would you rather have the beef lips?”
I never did get Erin to eat a bug, but I’m happy to report that more and more foreigners appear to be trying them, and it’s a darned good thing, too. Because it’s the food of the future. As any environmentalist and scientist will attest, the time is fast approaching when cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats—the four leading sources of the world’s protein today—will be so cost inefficient as to be unaffordable by anyone except the very wealthy.
Cows consume lots of fodder and water and require much time and effort to produce a single hamburger, whereas insects require little room, don’t eat much and breed like crazy. As I explained the food-of-the-future thing to Erin, I assured her the bugs wouldn’t show up on her plate looking like grasshoppers and scorpions.
“Think bug burgers,” I said, cheerily, without any noticeable effect.
Thai Fire
In Thailand, where restaurants rate their dishes by placing one, two, three and sometimes four little red chilis on the menu next to the dishes’ names to alert diners, I am tolerated. Barely. A longtime friend, who is a Thai chef, used to bring home food purchased at street stalls and as she placed it on the table, she pointed to one container and said, “Mine,” then to another, saying, “Yours.” As if to say, “Poor dear.”
Chili peppers are not exclusively Thai, but I can’t imagine life in Thailand without them. Thailand cannot claim to be the birthplace of the Capsicum —the chili was imported, along with much else in the national diet—it only acts as if it does. Surely, the per capita consumption of the small, fiery fruit is as high or higher than anywhere else.
The truth is, it’s an international phenomenon. There’s even a bi-monthly magazine published in the United States, Chile Pepper (there is no agreement on the spelling), and a wide variety of products is available, including pepper-shaped wind chimes, bells, and strings of Christmas tree lights. There is a Hot Sauce Club of America, where members receive two new hot sauces and a newsletter every month. There’s even a popular American rock and roll band that calls itself the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Yes, the band is hot.
Chilis are hot because they contain capsaicin (pronounced cap-SAY-a-sin), an irritant alkaloid found mostly in the interior tissue to which the seeds adhere. (Thus, removing the seeds helps lower the temperature.) Capsaicin has at least five separate chemical components: three delivering an immediate kick to the throat at the back of the palate, two others conveying a slower, longer-lasting, and less fierce heat on the tongue and mid-palate. Mmm-mmmmmm-mmm, say my Thai friends, who have had decades to get used to it.