The Cellar - November 14, 2008: Ants

While looking for a spider recipe:

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/weblog/jchamplin/
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/weblog/jch...561ABEE3E.html

Quote:

This meal preparation did not go as smoothly as one would imagine. Here is the story and why I have the rule:
"Never Put a Frozen Tarantula Inside a Microwave without Punching Holes In It's Carapace First!"

To deal with these creatures for cooking purposes it's really best, for the cook as well as the bug, that it is indeed dead prior to dinner preparations. Unlike lobsters, I didn't feel it best to try to wrestle with a tarantula over a boiling pot of water. The only other means of killing spiders had been reserved to weilding the local yellow pages with great force at the wolf spiders that had taken up home in my lower level apartment. I should state that doing this, doesn't lend it self to saving the remains for the needs I had that day. And, no, pancakes were not on the menu plans. So, I needed to off the not-so-little guy, and I decide the best way to do this was humanly place him in a freezer and allow him to gently drift off to the great web in the sky. In truth, I did this same thing for the tarantula and scorpion I cooked that week. Though for the cockroaches, they were placed in a large tinfoil box with a lid and forcibly placed into a warm oven to cook them. This is what my bug cookbook had said to do, and yes, there is a Bug cook book. I do have to say that doing that made me feel extremely uneasy... and I might make the analogy that I felt a bit nazi-esque with the oven and the frantic scampering of them as they heated away to tasty oblivion. My Karma was bad for years after that I tell you, Years! Well, the day came that I had to cook the tarantula for the event, and of course on this day I over slept. So, for that morning and had to deal with the frozen spider all in a rather short timeframe with little or no help by the seat of my pants.

How To cook a spider:
One of the first steps is to hold the tarantula over an open flame so that it burns off all the access hair, if those sharp little folicals should get into your throat or digestive system while eating it can cause infection as it pokes into the soft tissue. So... I use some tongs and place the frozen face hugger over the open flame... at this point i should inform you that spiders walk with a fluid design in their legs. It's actually all an amazing bit of hydrolics for these creatures to scurry around. They actually pump fluid into the legs and expand and contracts them to create the walking motion... this part of spider anatomy is forgotten as I place the obviously dead spider over the burner... At which point the nice warm fire causes the legs to fully extend. So, now I have a surpringly large flaming Facehugger that has seemed to have come back to life... Keeping my calm composure (after shrieking like a little girl and jumping 3 feet in the air) I turn to see that the other people in the kitchen had headed for the proverbial hills, some even went and hid behind the sofa. I watch as the legs slowly return back to their half closed state as I remove it from the flames.. (another side note, burning tarantula does NOT smell nice)

So... this is all being done quickly... and I need the tarantula to be thawed in order to cook with it. While the outside is scorched the inside is still a block of disgusting bleck... I look around and see a microwave on the counter and say... "do you think I should try to microwave it". Where in Andrew and the other convention attendants in the Ambrosia Party, who are still hiding in the living room from the flaming resurrection trick, loudly exclaim "YES".

Luckily I had the peice of mind to wrap it in paper towels... Because about 3 seconds after I place the bugger in there and press start I heard a rather distinctive sound. the closest analogy I can offer is if you have ever heard the sound effects foley artist use for deep mud pits with gas escaping from it.. or maybe lava bubbling..

I grasp the handle of the microwave... calm my nerves and exhale slooowly. Take one last breath of air scented with the smell of burnt tarantula hair and open the microwave.

The paper towel did it's best to hold in the gore.. I really do have to write to Bounty one of these days to tell them how truly versatile and absorbant their towels are, because very few bits of the explosion made it past the paper towel. If you are curious as to what a large arachnid looks like inside... the best way to describe it is "Horrible Gray Goo".

I reach in and remove the "delictable treat" that would be fed to my ex-coworker.. The sight made me almost vomit... So.. I decided to proceed with my cooking, though I changed my game plan due to the ruptured abdomen and a severe lack of time. I cut some of the carapace away and shape the outward crater into something more pretty. I then roast it slowly in the oven to bring out the true flavor. I mixed it with spices, put some parsley on there and added a fork...

Voilà

The meal went off disgustingly well, the person ate the spider, nearly vomited and many photos were taken. Sadly, my Karma is still in the red.