Crispy Crawlies

Cockroaches are tough, tenacious and in many ways remarkable, but Ian Morton still doesn’t want to eat them–or any other insect

- Ian Morton

CAN 1.4 billion Chinese be wrong?

Cockroaches have long been on their traditional menus. More than 100 farms supply the market, with the biggest in Xichang in the north of the country, where six billion cockroaches a year are bred in dimly lit concrete bunkers at 30°C. They’re fed on garbage and are proving a waste-disposal weapon for the country.

The ideal food species is the American cockroach, Periplaneta americana. Twice fried in hot oil in a wok, it offers a crispy shell and soft, succulent innards said to resemble cottage cheese, with an earthy taste and a hint of ammonia. Volumes go to pharmaceuticals to treat stomach and respiratory problems and cockroach preparations are prescribed as a vitamin supplement and for fighting cancer, AIDS and baldness. For medicinal purposes, 40 million Chinese patients consume a crushed cockroach potion said to taste vaguely sweet and smell of fish, yet it’s cockroaches as finger food and on street-food skewers that really make the tourist blink.

Mercifully, none of Britain’s three cockroach species is thought suitable for harvesting. The Oriental likes the cool, damp conditions of basements, drains and outside bins. The brown-banded is adaptable. The third and most familiar, the German, seeks the warmth and humidity of kitchens and bathrooms. It’s ubiquitous and prolific, the one you tread on when you crunch your way to the fridge in the dark across the floor of an infested kitchen in an old house, the one crawling on every bit of furniture, every piece of hanging washing, every hanging towel when you switch on the light. Smooth surfaces present no barrier, as its feet have tacky patches. Come the daylight and not an antenna is to be seen. Blattella germanica has retreated behind the cooker range, the old fireplace, the wainscot and anywhere to which a crack or gap gives access (blatta is Latin for an insect that shuns light).