The other white meat

Legs, heads, wings, exoskeletons — that’s the meal that stares up at me from my plate of panna cotta, grasshopper and cicada. It’s daunting to say the least, but those around me don’t seem fazed at all.

“The cicadas I usually describe as a little bit smoky, a little bit grassy. I like the fact that they sauteed it up a little dry, because they matched the texture of the panna cotta ... This is one of the best [dishes]!” says David Gracer, an English professor at the Community College of Rhode Island, as he enthusiastically rips off a piece and takes a bite. “The legs are very spiky, but I just bite these spikes, and they just shatter.”

Luckily, Gracer did not have to worry about horrified dinner guests at this particular meal, because it was the first event hosted by Princeton’s Environmental Discourses on the Ingestion of Bugs League, which goes by the apt abbreviation EDIBL, in Campus Club on Saturday.

The club served a four-course meal of gourmet standards featuring their favorite ingredient — bugs — and drew such a crowd that not everyone was able to sit down at the table. But in a room full of the brave and the curious, I was one of the few with reservations about ingesting an insect.

“I’m a big foodie, and I’m generally interested in tastes and flavors and anything I can just pick up along the way. I also just wanted to challenge myself, but I didn’t really see this as a challenge because I pretty much eat anything ... as long as it’s good-tasting and high-quality,” Nadirah Mansour ’14 said.

Other attendees came to learn and show support for sustainable food. The dinner even attracted a few vegetarians, like Kevin Donahue ’12, who decided that his inability to classify bugs into a food category was enough to justify a little taste.

But despite its captivating entrees, the club’s goals include far more than just experimentation with exotic food. After her junior-year project on entomophagy (the consumption of insects), Rena Chen ’11 and her friends decided to educate their peers on the potential nutritional benefit of insects to the human diet.

“Our dinner tonight didn’t actually center too much on the discussion of the cultures and the value of these kinds of foods around the world,” said Chen, an anthropology major. “But I am happy that everyone ate the food and everyone was open-minded about it — I think that’s just the first step.”

Getting students who are raised on sterilized lifestyles to eat insects, however, is no easy task. But Chen and Gracer found that simply by appealing to logic, they were able to make the night a success.

“The stigma is that it’s poor people’s food — that bugs are gross, bugs are dirty. But they’re actually much cleaner than things that we normally eat, like crab and lobster, which actually eat trash from the ocean floor as opposed to these clean vegetarians,” Chen explained.

Gracer added that in addition to the double standard with crustaceans, insects are generally safer to eat, cheaper to raise and are more environmentally friendly than traditional protein sources like chickens or cows. In fact, the nutrients in bugs are proven to be a better match for toddlers and babies than typical food sources.

“There can be no doubt that insects are good for the human body ... The science is very, very clear. Insects operate on a very even playing ground with conventional food,” Gracer said.

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Of course, diners at this meal were also fortunate to have their dishes meticulously prepared for taste, texture and aesthetics. The first several appetizers in particular got rave reviews from adventurous eaters.

Diana Lam ’12 cited the bruschetta with mascarpone, mint and mealworms as a personal favorite. “I really liked the bruschetta. The texture of the worm was very interesting, and it contrasted really well with the tomato,” she said.

Other guests also expressed their appreciation for texture, whether it was the crunchiness of the mealworms or the pop of the ant egg ceviche. Personally, I favored the thin taro slice topped with coconut custard and wax worms, a dish so flavorful I did not even need to shut my eyes before each spoonful.

Things got a little spicy, however, when our hosts began upping the sizes and tastes of the bugs. For many, the fishy taste of the silkworm pupae risotto posed the first real challenge. Gracer warned that in the past, people “were holding their noses in their seats,” explaining that the aroma is “a little offputting.”

But the real excitement came at the end with the arrival of EDIBL’s “daring desserts,” which was a novel experience for even the most courageous at the table. The first of the desserts featured the notorious honey panna cotta with roasted grasshoppers and cicadas that had been harvested on campus in 2004.

While picking at the larger critters was exciting for some, others found the presence of faces and limbs to be disconcerting.

Sarah Sims ’11 discovered that despite her appreciation of insects as healthy and sustainable food, she had trouble getting the big grasshoppers down.

“The only thing that bothered me was the concept. And it just tasted like fried cinnamon,” Sims said. “I also really don’t like things with exoskeletons.”

Others were similarly put off, likening the peculiar texture of the cicadas to the skin on popcorn kernels. But as we would soon discover, there were stranger bugs yet to try.

The final dish of the night was a very special serving of giant water bug paired with assorted fruits. Faced with a specimen about 1.5 inches in length, guests banded together in pairs to filet the innards of the bug from its tough, muscular abdomen.

Shockingly, after extracting the crablike meat, the smell of the bug was citrusy and pleasant. The taste itself evoked various descriptions — ranging from salty to aromatic, and even a comparison to Jolly Ranchers. Nevertheless, there was one resounding and unanimous response from all tasters: This is unlike anything I’ve ever tried before.