The event was a collaboration between
Insects & Wine
Anthroenology
Cambridge Food Security Forum
Trinity College Wine Society
Tsukahara-chimni 

*admittedly the air miles involved are not so sustainable...but until we have certified producers sustainably harvesting delicious wild-caught insects closer to home, this is the option I'm leaning towards. Happy to discuss other options, though!
​

In November, we`re holding an entomophagy event - a six course insectivorous lunch, based on a traditional Italian feast menu. This week, we held a trial event. This involved playing around with different ways of incoporating Japanese insects into our favourite Italian dishes, and serving them up to friends and specialists. See below for photos and explanations of some of the dishes! (Comments, advice and questions are all more than welcome)

Why Italian? Three reasons: Firstly, we wanted to take on the challenge of incorporating insects into the cuisine of a European country, since Europe is the one continent that lacks a history of entomophagy*. Secondly, Rome, Italy, was the location of the 2012 landmark FAO conference on entomophagy (which resulted in the publication of recent comprehensive FAO report on global entomophagy and food and feed security). Third and finally, tomatoes are a key ingredient in Italian cuisine. Why is this important? Because tomatoes are rich in glutamate, and are therefore often enhanced with small amounts of inosinate-rich foods such as anchovies or sardines to create a more intense umami taste. In this way, we hope to use insects as an inosinate-rich ingredient that will deepend the taste of typical Italian cuisine.

*(There are a few exceptions to this: For example, Casu Marzu is an Italian cheese that contains live fly larvae, which are eaten with the cheese; A similar example is found in the German cheese Milbenkase, containing live cheese mites.)

The main courses, clockwise from top left: Antipasto: A selection of tofu `cheeses` (soft tofu pressed and marinated in miso and sake kasu), with grasshoppers and silkworm pupae lightly fried with herbs and garlic, served as accompaniments to homemade bread; Salada: tricolore salad topped with grasshoppers; Primo: herbed cream pasta with crushed wasp larvae; tomato basil pasta with crushed wine-infused silkworm; Contorno: Oven roasted aubergine parmigiana with a silkworm okara topping; Secondo: Pizza (not a traditional Secondo dish but we wanted to try making pizza!) with silkworm tomatoe sauce and topped with grilled vegetables and herbed grasshoppers;