BARICHARA, Colombia (AP))—The first loud crackle tastes and feels like popcorn, but by the time the juices spray wildly in your mouth and the filament-like legs slide down your throat, there's no mistaking this toasted ant queen.
The people of sun-soaked northern Colombia have been eating ants for centuries. They believe the accurately named "hormiga culona'' (big-butt queen ant) is everything from a natural form of Viagra to a protein-rich defense against cancer.
A businessman in Santander province exported more than 880 pounds of the inch-long queen ants last year, many of them to be hand-dipped in Belgian chocolate and sold in fancy packaging at $8 for a half dozen at upscale London department stores like Harrods and Fortnum & Mason.
But even as the delicacy begins to expand beyond Colombia, the ants appear to be dwindling in Santander, and that worries the region's ant-eating bipeds.
This year's harvest, which usually begins around Easter and lasts as late as June, was one of the worst on record, with peasants in the artist colony of Barichara reporting half their normal year's haul.
Entomologists say the winter was unusually harsh and spring rains were late, which may have disturbed the virgin queen ants' nuptial flights - the one time a year when they emerge from their dune-like ant hills to seek a mate and form a new colony. Almost as often, the queens are grabbed by lizards, birds or humans.
In Colombia, people generally toast the ants in salt at community gatherings and eat them as a snack.
But there is innovation. Restaurants in Barichara offer an ant-based spread for bread and an ant-flavored lamb sauce.
Stuffed tortilla "atta wraps'' led the menu at a recent tasting at the Montreal Insectarium, an insect museum in Canada.
"In France, they're so highly regarded people started calling them the caviar of Santander,'' said Stephane Le Tirant, curator at the Montreal Insectarium.
Reading the above excerpt from livescience.com really opened up a can of worms. While searching around for images to go with the article I ran into a veritable beehive of sites featuring edible insects and insect recipes including chocolate chirpie chip cookies (grasshoppers), dragon fly stew, insect crunch and pan roasted insect medley with salad.
Here is an easy recipe from the Liverpool Museum:
Red Ant Stir Fry
Ingredients
1 tablespoon oil
300g female giant red ants
1 onion, chopped
Preparation
Heat the oil in a pan, then stir-fry the ants and the onion together until
the onion is well browned. As the ants are cooked they become dry and crisp,due to their high fat content. They taste like bacon.
VIVA LAS HORMIGAS!!!!
[hormiga culona, edible insects], ants, columbian cuisine
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