An artisanal pasta-maker in northeastern France is struggling to meet demand after adding a crunchy, protein-rich ingredient to his noodles — insects.
“The name of the ingredient might be a turnoff, but it’s really delicious, especially with game meat,” said Alain Limon as he spread cricket-flavored fusilli on a drying rack.
Limon, 52, is the only employee at the Atelier a Pates (Pasta Workshop) in Thiefosse, northeastern France.
His boss, Stephanie Richard, began her homemade pasta business in 2012 and is now hiring again thanks to the success of her latest creations made from insect flour.
“The insect is the protein of the future,” Richard said. “It’s protein of high quality that is well digested by the body.”
A 2013 report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization noted the “huge potential” of insects, for feeding not only people, but also livestock.
Insects are already a common food in many developing countries across Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania.
Some European cheeses also contain or use insects, such as France’s mimolette, whose gray crust is the result of cheese mites intentionally introduced to add flavor, or the Sardinian casu marzu, which contains live insect larvae.
For Richard’s unique pastas, she uses pulverized crickets and grasshoppers, sometimes mixing the two, and sometimes mixing ground cepes with cricket flour.
“There’s a kind of nutty taste thanks to the cepes, making it taste more like whole wheat pasta,” Richard said.
She was developing a high-protein pasta for athletes when an insect distributor in eastern Lyon contacted her. Sold on the idea, she began producing pasta made from insect flour in time for the Christmas holidays last year and about 500 flew off her shelves.
“The product piqued the curiosity and had great success,” said Richard, who is also a part-time French teacher.
Whole eggs are added to a mixture of 7 percent insect flour to 93 percent organic spelt wheat flour, producing a brownish pasta that is shaped into radiatori, fusilli, spaghetti and penne.
At first Richard made plain fresh egg pasta before diversifying her production, while keeping it strictly within the culinary traditions of the Lorraine region, using wild garlic, nettles and safran, for example. All of her ingredients were from Lorraine except durum semolina, which Richard said is incompatible with the climate.
Four years on with the addition of insect flour to the mix, “it’s working so well that we will soon be able to hire a second person,” Richard said, proud of her weekly production now at about 400kg.
However, she does not plan to stop there — she is working on a new recipe using Maroilles cheese from northern France.
Insect flour pastas are more expensive than standard kinds, but Richard said that they can replace meat for vegetarians — or for people who prefer crickets.
“People with iron or magnesium deficiencies will also eat these products,” she said.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of