Insect Dinner
I planned to incorporate insects into every aspect of the dinner. Here are the main ingredients…
- Pork Loin Katsu
- Melody of Carrots
- Golden Fried Rice
Pork Loin Katsu
I started with the pork loin pieces and tenderized using a stainless-steel tenderizer. My plan was to use mealworms for seasoning and the cricket powder in the coating process with the Panko.
Taking a good chunk of meal worms, I chopped them up to the same size at the cracked black peppercorns and added salt. I then sprinkled and seasoned each piece with the seasoning mixture.
I then incorporated the cricket powder with potato flour and dredged the cutlets into the mix. The blend was 2/3 cricket powder to flour (I have extra cricket powder + what I have in the kit) and one interesting note was that and I blended, the mix got clumpy, so I have to stop and break it up a bit. My guess is that cricket powder contains more moisture than flour.
Breading…
Golden Fried Rice
I follow the recipe and techniques of Lucas Sin’s popular approach to Golden Fried Rice. It is an awesome recipe and technique to master, everyone loves the outcome. I planned to top the rice with black ants.
Melody of Carrots
The more I tasted and thought about Chapulines, I kept coming back to the flavor having a bit of fermentation to it. This got me thinking about one of my favorite things… The fermented tea from China called Pu’er (pu-erh), typically from the Yunnan province. It is wonderfully complex and earthy.
I started by brewing a tea with a small amount of green onion to brighten it and let it seep for 15 minutes.
The result was an earthy and very favorable tasting tea. It had none of the sharpness of the Chapulines when you just taste them. It was also hard to on down the flavor as familiar and I thought it was close to tasking more like Pu’er tea.
I then added the prep’d carrots and allowed them to lightly blanch from the hot brew and added some pickled ginger for more flavor depth.
The Dinner
Overall everything worked well. The carrots came out with a little too much ginger and more floral than I would like, so I will use a small amount of fresh ginger next time. My wife even enjoyed the ants. I loved them on the dish.
