I had been to a night market in Beijing and tried all sorts of crispy critters and was generally disappointed that they didn't have much flavor. The seahorses and scorpions, for instance, were small, and after they were fried they were crunchy and tasted like popcorn. Silk worms tasted disgusting, as expected, but everything else was pretty easy to eat.
I ate grasshoppers in Cambodia. They were easy and even a bit tasty. But I didn't think I could bring myself to eat a four-inch cockroach or a tarantula.
Those are cockroaches on the left, then spiders, then whole partridges, with grasshoppers in the second row.
I was wandering around by myself when I saw this. If there had been traveling with someone who was willing to try it with me, or even to egg me on (I'm talking to you, Earl) I would have tried it.
A local woman came by to sample the goods, and I watched her eat one. You could see from the look on her face that she was sampling the cockroach as someone would sample a wine. Or durian!
As I watched her I was really glad I wasn't brave enough to try one. I would have popped the whole thing in my mouth like a grasshopper.
But that's not how it's done.
You break off the wings. Then you snap the head and abdomen off, much like cracking a lobster. Then you pop the meat out of the shell -- it's about as big as a Brazil nut -- and chew slowly ... I nearly gagged.
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