Insect Cuisine – Maeng Da Water Beetle Dip with Catfish and Roasted Chili – Thai Regional Food

This is my take on “The Beetles Greatest Hits” as I fell in love with this dish a few weeks ago and have been bugging to see it made ever since. I am pretending that I am doing this for posterity, for you, the reader. In fact, it is selfish. I just like it and want to know how to make it so I can show it off in front of my friends and fellow Thai chefs 😉

I have to admit, there’s something a little unnerving about putting a creature that looks a lot like a giant cockroach into your mouth. You wouldn’t guess from my handwriting, but I’m actually just like you. If someone had suggested to me ten years ago that I would walk up to a street vendor, give him 10 baht and swallow a huge bug with wings and half a dozen crunchy legs half tucked under its shiny shell, expletives would have flown from my lips like a plague of locusts (unfried) heading through Egypt. laugh? I would have screwed up.

Actually, it was late at night, a few beers into the night on my fourth trip to Thailand, when I was convinced to give the grasshoppers a try. In fact, I convinced myself, no prod is needed. Surprisingly, I found them to be a bit like potato chips. Tasty, crisp, and great with a beer. Understanding it was the hardest part. I had broken some kind of barrier, and far from being proud or boastful I found myself rather introspective, inquiring into the reasons for my terror of trying these things before. I’m not as weird as you think.

A friend, Simon, asked me today if I was a little upset about all this weird food. My answer was yes, it was. Things like Twinkies, steak and kidney pies, French-style pulled lamb brains, and Kazakh attempts at pizza scare the hell out of me. Also natto, which is a slimy, sticky Japanese fermented rice that I once had the displeasure of putting in my mouth. I’m not much into guts, and I also remember my teenage days recoiling in horror at the thought of anyone eating raw fish. Those Japanese whale-killing bastards ate RAW BLOODY FISH! I could not believe it. Young Kiwis with long hair and AC-DC t-shirts couldn’t ‘get it’ back then. There was only a healthy mistrust of foreigners and the “strange trash” they passed off as food.

Fast forward a few years and I have run two successful Japanese restaurants and have a great appreciation for cuisine and people. I’m SO glad I didn’t do the TAFE course back then which taught me how to make prosciutto, then rolled ham, then salami, and finally the popular cocktail sausage + poland we all know and love with their nasty red coloring. grime scraped off the board and made from the leftovers.

I would also challenge EVERYONE to take a close look at what goes into a Chicken McNugget and then eat one, never again. .

Like everything, it’s a bit about getting out of our comfort zone and exploring our logic to do what we do, eat what we eat, and retain the opinions and attitudes we grew up with. Some of us do, some of us don’t. I truly believe that traveling forces us to re-explore our convictions and reason for being, even if some of those discoveries are things we’d rather have left more comfortably in the closet. (Don’t worry, I won’t get started on the whipped cream spray and the Batman suit.)

But back to the Maeng Da: I was sitting in a bar in Bangkok on vacation many moons ago, eating fried grasshoppers and joking with a clothing vendor who was eating Maeng da: these big water beetles. She was a great athlete, but she gave it back to me and offered me one.

I wrinkled my nose in disgust and she made a “No” gesture “Don’t eat like that” – then showed me – opening the shell and revealing the caviar-like interior. She offered it to me and then tasted a bit, showing me that she was fine. THIS was what we ate, not the whole shebang.

I scraped it off and tasted it: the flavor was intense but strangely pleasant. It’s not like an insect at all. It seemed to be strangely familiar, but at the same time so strange.

It had the pungency of a perfume or detergent, words can hardly explain it, but the freshness of lime or citrus with an indescribable top note.

That was a long time ago, and it popped back into my existence on this planet a couple of weeks ago in an innocent-looking splash.

They were watching me as I dipped the sticky rice ball into the gray stuff.

It looked like babaganoush, roasted eggplant sauce, but I knew it wasn’t.

I thought it was a ‘nam prik’ fish and I was not wrong. It had “Maeng Da” in it and from my first bite I was hooked. It’s like the first time you try a cocktail or a drink that has a distillate or liquor that really appeals to you. You recognize the taste and it forms a memory: a longing and flavor profile that lingers like a ghost in a dream. It is real? What part of the plate IS? You want to deconstruct it and understand it. I had to see the process and document it for your benefit (I told myself) but it was really for me.

The fact that this was ground up in a bathroom didn’t hurt either. there was no plump, shiny hexapod to contend with, just a creamy-textured dish with incredible flavor.

We collected the bugs from the market.

They are called Maeng Da, which means ‘pimp’. As in ‘selling prostitutes’. Just like the big black men in fedoras, killer fashion bells, and platform heels on ‘Austin Powers.’

These are water beetles that skim the surface of ponds in the rainy season, so ‘dad’ was a bit scared that he had to shell out 12 baht each to buy them for me as they were expensive due to lack of rain until now at the station.

Does not matter. I paid the 60 baht for 5 each and another 40 baht for a couple of squirming catfish, and drove home ready for the feast to come. I don’t tell the story as well as my trusty camera, so let me write the recipe below and go over it with you. If you can understand this, it’s an amazing thing to try. Step by step photos can be found on my website if you are curious to see the images.

• 2 of each small catfish
• lemongrass
• Salt
• water to poach
• Maaeng da water beetles – 3 each
• Chiles – 3 each – roasted over a gas or wood flame
• Garlic – 3-4 cloves
• Salt to taste
• Roasted dried red chili flakes – 1 dsp
• Cilantro – 2 dsp chopped fresh
• Chives – 1-2 each

method

1. Put the catfish in a pot with water, crushed lemongrass twisted into a knot, and a little salt to taste.
2. Cook over low heat until well cooked.
3. Remove the fish: remove the meat from the bones and reserve.
4. Strain and reserve the fish cooking liquid (lemongrass fish broth)
5. Stringing Maeng Da Water Beetles
6. Hold over a gas flame and toast for a minute or two until cooked through and aromatic.
7. Add the garlic to a mortar and chop and mash
8. Add the flame-roasted chiles and mash as well to combine with the garlic.
9. Finely chop all the Maeng Da beetles and mash to a smooth paste until the shells are pureed http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6nw1nCq3kQ
10. Add the fish and mash to form a paste.
11. Add the toasted chili flakes, cilantro, and minced spring onion.
12. Add enough lemongrass fish poached broth to make it a smooth consistency for dipping.
13. mix to match
14. Serve and top with freshly chopped chives.
15. Serve with fresh boiled vegetables. We use boiled baby loofah (squash) and Thai ‘praya’ eggplants, boiled until soft.

It is also served with sticky rice. This was an amazing and memorable dish. I’m happy to answer any questions you may have, and have tried some weird and wonderful dishes, many of which appear on my site alongside “normal” Thai recipes. I would love your comments, opinions, questions, suggestions, abuse and expressions of horror. Please come and visit.