Bogong moths
I have lots more on scones and biscuits, but you can’t live on a solid diet of afternoon tea. And besides, not all culinary history originates in the UK.
Today’s ingredient used to be cooked over a fire. Apparently bogong moths dry roast delightfully. When people ask if I’ve tasted them I reply “They’re not kosher” but the real reason I haven’t is I’m just plain nervous about eating moths.
Bogongs are a big dark-dark moth that colonise the valleys of Canberra in early summer every year. They were a pre-European delicacy and there’s a place up near where Miles Franklin’s family used to live that was a meeting place where people feasted on bogongs. They’re rather beautiful and mysterious until they try to knock their brains in the sheen of my eyeglasses. I won’t tell you what I call them at those times.
Bogong moths are survivors. American trappers decimated the lyrebird population of this area in their bid to make money on hat ornaments a century or so ago, but the bogong moth population is still so large that one year they just about covered Parliament House.
Australia is beginning to learn about native foods. We eat bush tomatoes (delectable on hot roast potato with butter), and we adore several rainforest spices. We kindly allow our US friends to think that they invented macadamia nuts. We’ve never taken to bogong moths though.
I keep thinking I should try them because I live right in the flight path and it would show my resepct of indigenous food history. Except bogong moths are big and dark and fluttery and look as if they have flown straight out of Harry Potter: I don’t *want* to eat them. I can tell you, however, that they are supposed to roast delightfully.
June 8th, 2007 at 5:02 am
[...] cooking them, despite the swarms that appear here very summer. I’ve blogged on them, too, and here’s the proof. Blogging and search terms alone don’t prove something is a comfort food, otherwise [...]