Cecile’s latest batch of students watched attentively as she launched into the last step of the dish: swirling grasshoppers around in a frying pan before setting them on the couscous.
In their bid to find an environmentally-friendly alternative to meat, Richard, 41, Mariet, 53, and Seppo, 43, are looking to insects.
They are counting on Cecile to show them how to cook a menu of couscous, hamburger and baklava pastries with mealworms, grasshoppers or other insect larvae as key ingredients.
Photo: AFP
“The point is to find an alternative to meat. Not necessarily to replace it, but to reduce it,” said Mariet, who paid 50 euros (US$68) for the course.
“It’s easier if someone teaches you,” she said, at Cecile’s kitchen in the southeastern Dutch city of Sittard.
A smiling Richard confesses that for him, insects offer a perfect middle path between being a carnivore and a herbivore.
“I want to live in a healthy way, but being vegetarian is a bit too hard for me,” said Richard, who acquired a taste for creepy crawlies while traveling in Southeast Asia.
With the meat industry stricken with problems, from horsemeat labeled as beef to the environmental impact of growing animal feed, protein-rich and fat-poor insects are increasingly seen as a viable alternative.
Ten times more feed is required to grow the comparable weight in cows than in insects, according to the Netherlands’ Wageningen University, which has a special insect department and was a pioneer in promoting their consumption.
Insect eating has not yet won mainstream acceptance in Europe, although about 2 billion people elsewhere in the world consume them regularly.
Most Europeans remain reluctant to bite into a grasshopper, grub or other insect even if they are dry, clean and disease free.
“Seriously, I don’t understand why people are so disgusted by insects,” Seppo said, sprinkling a handful of grasshoppers over his steaming couscous dish.
“Frankly, I know what I’d prefer if I had to choose between an insect or seafood such as an oyster or mussel,” he said.
Meanwhile, Mariet is mixing mealworms with minced beef to make burgers — renamed here “hambuggers,” a potentially problematic name in English-speaking countries — while Richard browns some grasshoppers marinated in soy sauce in the frying pan.
The freeze-dried insects can be stored for up to a year, said Arno Snellens, who founded the Insectable wholesale bug business, which helps organizes these pedagogical evenings with Cecile Lormans.
“It’s inevitable, insects are the future, we can’t go on producing meat on such a scale,” said Snellens, who claims his company’s turnover doubles every six months. “It takes time for mentalities to change.”
Insect sales are still paltry in the Netherlands compared with meat, but Wageningen University entomologist Marcel Dicke insists that change is afoot.
Insects are slowly acquiring a culinary niche, from cooking books to increased supply and demand, he says.
“Fifteen years ago, people said: ‘What, insects, really?’ but today people say: ‘Oh yes, where can I get some?’” Dicke said. “Of course it takes time for mentalities to chance, but they can change, and I think the fact that people want to learn to cook is representative of this trend.”
The Meertens insect production business, also in the southeastern Netherlands, sells just 2 percent to 3 percent of its production for human consumption, the rest is for animal feed.
Nevertheless, the amount of production for humans has been steadily rising since production began in 2008.
The major problem is cost: the market — and therefore production — is still far too small to make it as profitable as selling meat.
Arno sells 30g of freeze-dried grasshoppers for 12.50 euros, while 50g of mealworms costs 8.50 euros.
“There are several ways to convince people, it depends on the individual: Some prefer not to see they’re eating insects, for them to be powdered in a quiche, for instance, while others prefer to insect still to be whole when eaten,” Dicke said.
In Cecile’s kitchen, three newly qualified insect chefs licked their lips as they sampled what they had just prepared.
“It tastes slightly nutty, like hazelnuts,” Seppo said, biting into his burger.
“It’s like nothing I’ve ever tasted, but it’s tasty, and crunchy,” Richard said. “You shouldn’t try to compare it to anything else, I’d just say it tastes of insects.”
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to