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Exotic food ; a very special treat from Reunion island. French people are well known for enjoying weird food such as frog legs and snails but here on Reunion Island one of the topmost delicacies is fried wasp larva…
Polistes hebraeus is a member of the large hymenopterous order, insects characterized by two pairs of thin translucent wings. It does belong to the pterygots sub -class and the neopter group, being a close relative of bees and ants. Wasps species number several thousands world wide, some are solitary, other congregate and are called social wasps, Polistes hebraeus is one of those which basically means that they build nests. It is found mostly in savannas of the West coast on Reunion island but will also happily set in ravines, forest hedges and houses. They may build the nest in an empty dead log, under some rock or even just underneath a palm or banana leaf.
They go through an annual cycle which we can start artificially with the winter move as it is now the beginning of Austral winter and wasps can be seen flying around trunks and walls looking for a suitable spot to spend winter. The ones we see at this time of the year are all females which have been fertilized by males not long ago, the males shortly dying afterwards as it often is the case amongst this kind of insects. So those females will find a hole, crevice or crack and stay there for a few months corresponding to the dry and cooler season. When the weather will warm up again and the first rains will start, sometimes in November or December, it will also be the time when butterflies become more active and lay many eggs which will soon turn into nice chubby juicy caterpillars, the favourite food of wasps and their larva as those insects are carnivorous and with a rather strong appetite. So the female, which is a potent queen, will find a protected place such a one listed above and start working. She will first make a very strong peduncle with paper processed by chewing wood that she will cover with resin harvested on trees. This peduncle has a shiny black aspect and must secure the future nest against odds comprising cyclones. Then she will built the nest itself, still using home-made paper by mixing wood and saliva and using the same hexagonal patterns bees use in hives.Nest vary in size, some will be as little as a child's hand and some can reach 20cm in diameter. Once the first rooms are built the queen will start laying eggs which have to be attached on the side of the room as the nest lays down and rooms are not closed. The queen now has a very busy life, she lays eggs, raises and grooms the larva, provides them with food. As this is an exhausting thing, the first wasps to be born will all be workers which will then take care of the work while the queen will stay on the nest and concentrate on producing eggs. A few days after the eggs have been laid they turn into a very voracious larva which will be fed with caterpillar meat, water and nectar. Three weeks later they will be fully grown, completely filling the alveoli where they were born. They will then build an operculum to close the alveoli and spend about a week transforming into adults with wings. At the end of summer the queen will die, allowing the larva to become sexed adults. While the queen is still alive and feeding the larva she produces some hormones which effect is to sterilize the larva hence giving birth only to workers. The sexed females will soon be fertilized by the males and it will then be time to look for a winter shelter and start it all again.
So now that we have set the actors and the decorum the actors here comes another one, the Hunter. Men have been hunting and gathering food in the wild for eons, people who first settled on Reunion in the 18th and 19th century soon learnt that they could get some extra proteins without having to slash a pig or raise a beef and found out that wasp larva are nutritious, tasty and not that hard to get. Let's hit the path! What you need is a good eyesight, reliable legs to walk and possibly climb and a box of matches. Matches will be used to light a ‘mât de choka' or is other terms the dried infructescence mast from Furcraea foetida, a member of the Agavaceae introduced on Reunion for fibres and which has turned in a very aggressive weed. This close relative of the aloe produces a huge pole with bulblets (small aerial bulbs) which will eventually dry and make a perfect smoke device as the pith contained inside has the property of burning slowly while producing heavy smoke, a very useful items to smoke wasps away! The beauty of the thing is that although the wasps are somewhat traumatised they do not die and will often build another nest further on. Now let us head back home and turn the cooker on!
The larva will be extracted from the alveoli either using a sharp piece of wood, a lemon tree spine or for more modern ages hunters like us a pair of tweezers. This is basic cooking here, no need to be an accomplished chief but you still have to follow the protocol; larva are to be first cooked in a very small amount of water with salt and pepper added. If you throw them directly in hot oil they will mostly burst open which means that your pan will be almost empty and you will have to clean the whole kitchen from floor to ceiling. Once the larva turn white they will be taken out of the water, dried and then only fried in oil with garlic, as they are rather small (poor!) things the process will be fast, you certainly do not want to let them burn after all it took to get them here! Now you can sit and enjoy your delicacy with white rice and a sip of the local beer known by people as ‘Dodo' because there is a drawing of the famous bird printed on the bottle.
It may seem rather gross to many people but insects eating is not a weird thing confined to primitive tribes of Reunion...As a matter of fact it is an important part of the diet in many countries of Africa, Australia, Latin America and Asia. People in those places would happily eat grasshoppers, ants, termites, caterpillars, larva of various origins, spiders, scorpios and so on. Studies have shown that no less than 1417 different species of insects are commonly eaten world wide. In parts of Africa people stop buying beef meat when the season comes for a certain caterpillar to be picked and hundreds of tons are harvested and sold on marketplaces. In Mexico ants eggs are another costly delicacy known as ‘escamoles'. And in the same country the real mescal always comes with the guzano in the bottle, guzano which is nothing else but the larva of a butterfly. No way to travel across Australia without stumbling at a time or another on the balga grubs, those fat ones which develop in the trunk of the grass trees Xanthorrhoea preissii. We could go on and on with examples and add that the nutritious values of insects are quite high and they do not contain all the chemicals found in commercial meat such as drugs, synthetic vitamins, weed-killers and insecticides.
So if you want to stay healthy, reduce pollution and save your garden, go out and eat them bugs!
About Jean-Jacques Segalen
I am a Parisian born professional horticulturist specialized in tropical seeds producing, set on Reunion island (just between Mauritius and Madagascar) 17 years ago. I spend a lot of time gathering seeds in the wild, the ones I do not grow that is. Also a dedicated Tai-Chi practitioner and tree climber!
Posted by LADYDAYGLASS (from mOTRIL
(Spain)) on June 13, 2008 at 3:53 PM:
Hi Jean
You may remember sending me these seeds about a month ago well they arrived sorry I have been away so couldn't let you know I have tried to leave you some feedback on ebay but I can't find the transaction in my summary if you can remember the item number and let me have it I will do the Honours.
many thanks,
Pamela Wilson
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 14, 2008 at 12:24 AM:
Hi Pamela
Yes indeed I do remember sending those seeds in Southern Spain. There is no item number on Ebay as we just used PayPal for payment but I do not actually sale on Ebay, only through my Barbadine website. Your son also informed me that the palm seeds reached him all right.
All the best
Jean-Jacques
...
Subject: LoL
Posted by phicks (from Lakeland, FL) on June 8, 2008 at 1:57 PM:
Good Article I was a Chef for close to 40 years ive eaten a lot of strange things but not wasp Larva thing ill pass Paul
...
Subject: Oh. No!
Posted by gloria125 (from Greensboro, AL) on June 8, 2008 at 1:28 PM:
Well. I loved the article, but I am glad I am a vegetarian!
thank you for the cultural lesson, Jean-Jacques!
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 9, 2008 at 12:18 AM:
I have to tell you that I hesitated a while before publishing this one by fear of shocking some readers and of course for vegetarians it is a rather salvage thing, now if you consider that those wasps are very carnivorous themselves it may be logical karmic thing that they would be eaten by a bigger carnivorous (which means I must be ready to get eaten by an ever bigger one!;))
JJ
...
Posted by gloria125 (from Greensboro, AL) on June 9, 2008 at 7:20 AM:
Lets hope there are not people-eating carnivores in your part of the world! its hard enough living in a world of pollution, crooks, and thieves!
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 10, 2008 at 5:45 AM:
We have our part of pollution, crooks and thieves here but luckily the only man-eating beasts are only found in the ocean...
...
Posted by gloria125 (from Greensboro, AL) on June 10, 2008 at 7:41 AM:
Good reason to stay out of the Ocean, JJacques!
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 10, 2008 at 8:59 AM:
And another good reason to climb trees!
...
Posted by gloria125 (from Greensboro, AL) on June 10, 2008 at 9:18 AM:
Especially if one of those creatures comes out of the ocean and decides to chase you! They always do that in the sci fi movies!
Do you have the man eating sharks around Reunion?
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 10, 2008 at 12:12 PM:
I stopped watching such movies so should be safe up trees...
Yes we have shark who enjoy a bit of a surfer every once in a while, they are not very big so they usually are happy with a leg or an arm but I had to choose between surfing and climbing...More seriously there are attacks but very rare and so far deadly only on subwater fishers, I usually swim in the lagoon which is safe.
...
Posted by gloria125 (from Greensboro, AL) on June 10, 2008 at 1:28 PM:
Sounds like life on an island paradise!
...
Subject: And to think...
Posted by critterologist (from Frederick, MD) on June 8, 2008 at 10:47 AM:
I just knocked down a little wasp nest from the front door and tossed it without giving a thought to the potential culinary delights within!
;-)
Thanks for an interesting article!
...
Posted by bluekat76 (from Ijamsville, MD) on June 8, 2008 at 10:57 AM:
I have a nest here if you are that disappointed Jill :))
So Jean-Jacques, do they have a taste all their own or take on the garlic flavor?
-Kim
...
Posted by vossner (from Richmond, TX) on June 8, 2008 at 11:21 AM:
not the same, but I had roasted cicadas in the orient and despite all the fancy spices, they tasted rather flavorless, just like if you were eating a piece of paper. I ate them fast, before my brain had a chance to realize what I was eating, lol.
I can honestly and w/o hesitation say I will not get a craving for this delicacy any time soon.
My opinion set aside, very interesting article, J-J
...
Posted by critterologist (from Frederick, MD) on June 8, 2008 at 11:41 AM:
Thanks, Kim, but I'll wait on a report from you... ;-)
Vossner, I'm with you on the cicadas... texture was unappealing. The next time there was a big cicada "event" I didn't line up at the tasting table. Some things, you only need to try once (or not at all, if you're not of an adventurous bent). LOL
...
Posted by bluekat76 (from Ijamsville, MD) on June 8, 2008 at 12:18 PM:
LOL Jill! Good one. Can I borrow your tweezers? Care to come over for pot luck dinner?.....
Cicada's?!? not happening.
I did eat chocolate covert ants but I don't think that counts - chocolate and no visual to overcome disqualify that delicacy. On the other hand I am very fond of snails - escargot - again with the garlic overtones. I also eat steak tartar, beef carpaccio, rabbit, sashimi and ceviche which may turn up a lot of noses but more for me!
Eating insects for a lot of countries is all about getting protein into their diets. Goodness knows there is plenty of availability with insects!
...
Posted by carrielamont (from Milton, MA) on June 8, 2008 at 1:03 PM:
Jean-Jacques, how did I know this would be about larves? (Groan.) Thank you for another fascinating article!
Carrie
...
Posted by pajaritomt (from Los Alamos, NM) on June 8, 2008 at 4:22 PM:
In Thailand, insects are a popular part of the local diet. They are also very nutritious. I couldn't get my nerve up to try most of them, but I did have some fried silkworms. They were like very light french fries. Not bad.
In the local market great big water bugs are popular -- also other kinds of insects. I think you had best start out eating insects as a child if you are going to eat them as an adult.
...
Posted by critterologist (from Frederick, MD) on June 8, 2008 at 4:34 PM:
I unintentionally ate any number of insects as a child, especially gnats... there was no avoiding them as they swarmed around your face in summer! As I recall, they taste sour... LOL
...
Posted by carrielamont (from Milton, MA) on June 8, 2008 at 4:44 PM:
Well, yes, unintentional exotic insect intake is a whole different ball of wax, isn't it!
...
Posted by pajaritomt (from Los Alamos, NM) on June 8, 2008 at 5:28 PM:
There is a very sad story about some very poor people in India who got flower with weevils and other yucky things in it because that was all they could afford. A group of aid workers decided to get them flour without the bugs -- I don't know if they sifted it or bought other flour, but the year with the good flour, these people suffered more nutritional problems than they had with the bad flour. Sadly, insects do provide needed nourishment sometimes.
The other thing they do with insects in Thailand is make purses and sculptures with the iridescent wings and bodies of beetles and who knows what other kind of insects. I saw these in the Queen's Museum in Bangkok. They are magnificently iridescent blue, green and purple, but so expensive only the very most wealthy can afford them.
...
Posted by carrielamont (from Milton, MA) on June 8, 2008 at 5:36 PM:
Reminds me of the stories you hear about countries like India (?) getting powdered milk as aid from richer countries. Cow milk is not used for food in these countries, the story goes, and the population was for the most part lactose-intolerant. But it may be one of those urban legends one hears.
...
Posted by pajaritomt (from Los Alamos, NM) on June 8, 2008 at 5:46 PM:
Hard to verify the authenticity, but the US does send food aid that doesn't make any sense for the population some times.
...
Posted by jjacques (from LE TAMPON
(Reunion (French))) on June 9, 2008 at 12:14 AM:
Never tasted cicadas myself but those wasp larva have a taste of their own, sort of hazelnut, the real connoisseurs enjoy them directly popped out of the net so the garlic would not alter the taste but I have tried it this way so far!
JJ
They may build the nest in an empty dead log, under some rock or even just underneath a palm or banana leaf. 
This is basic cooking here, no need to be an accomplished chief but you still have to follow the protocol; larva are to be first cooked in a very small amount of water with salt and pepper added. 
If you throw them directly in hot oil they will mostly burst open which means that your pan will be almost empty and you will have to clean the whole kitchen from floor to ceiling. Once the larva turn white they will be taken out of the water, dried and then only fried in oil with garlic, as they are rather s
mall (poor!) things the process will be fast, you certainly d
o not want to let them burn after all it took to get them here! Now you can sit and enjoy your delicacy with white rice and a sip of the local beer known by people as ‘Dodo' because there is a drawing of the famous bird printed on the bottle.
