Our friends Anna & Jason held their 2nd Annual Wild Game night tonight. No, it's not about strip Twister or a really raucous version of Monopoly. Wild Game Night is a potluck featuring meats not commonly found on US tables - an opportunity for friend to come together and try out new things.
It being my first Wild Game Night, I was very excited - and went a little overboard. My dishes were an Alligator, Buffalo & Venison Sausage Roll (wrapped in puff pastry), a Wild Boar Bacon & Cheese Fondue, Rattlesnake cakes (in the style of a crab cake), and perhaps the strangest dish of the night - Caesar Salad featuring Batter Fried Live Cricket Croutons.
In college, studying entomology, I tasted a lot of bugs. Ants (which have an amazing lemon flavor), termites (which taste like wood), and crickets. Crickets have a nutty flavor, and a wealth of protein. Despite eating a ton of meat and seafood - including shrimp & crab, which are also arthropods, Western cultures seem to have lost insect eating, even though most of the world's cultures eat various grubs, bugs, and other creepy crawlies. One Valentines day, I even filled a heart shaped box with live crickets for a friend, and we munched on them at a little outdoor cafe. There's something kinda wild about feeling a cricket walking around in your mouth before you start chewing. It may sound gruesome, or cruel, but all meats comes from an animal that was, at one time, alive and had to be killed in order to make it onto our plates. At least crickets have only a rudimentary nervous system with ganglia rather than a brain.
My preparation of the 'croutons' was to dip the live crickets (which I'd been feeding fresh herbs for a few days) into a flour/egg batter, then toss them into hot oil. It drew some attention, and a few folks ended up trying live crickets to get the feel of it moving in their mouth.
It was great fun to get to try so many different meats. Other folks brought elk tacos, crocodile satay, and a geoduck ceviche, all of which were quite good.
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