What's for dinner?

CAPTION: CHOCOLATE COATED SCORPION  - YUM!

I’ve heard rumours that within a few years we will all be eating insects. The world’s meat supplies running close to extinction, we will be turning to locusts instead.

Hard to believe?

Not if you’ve ever seen the HSBC TV ad in which a little girl in the Far East is offered – as a treat – a skewer of deep fried bugs; her face forlorn until the trader coats them in multicoloured hundreds and thousands: the jungle version of a Fab ice lolly.

We may cringe at the idea – but, think about it: would we have reacted any differently if we’d been there when someone first produced a prawn from the sea and said: “Hey, cook this ugly tentacled creature and it will turn pink. Then crack off its shell and eat it... You’ll love it so much you’ll soon be serving it with a Marie Rose dressing in an avocado pear.”

In my head I know a locust is not that different from a prawn - at least in so far as it is a small and ugly source of protein. 
Even so, I am the kind of person who always jumps and squeals on encountering hairy, tentacled, creeping and scuttling creatures on holiday in France – and, when you feel like that about something, you cannot imagine it tasting anything other than absolutely foul.

But when I was invited to an exclusive press dinner (“just 10 special guests”) by Sanofi, the makers of Anthisan – the antihistamine cream for insect stings and bites -- the penny did not drop that the venue for our dinner  – Archipelago restaurant - would have any sinister connection to the subject of our talk (biting insects), or the title of the event (“I’m a journalist get me out of here!”).

Until a week ago, when I googled to see where I was going, and realised that insects feature heavily on the menu – along with exotic meats such as zebra, kangaroo and crocodile.

But the interior – all dark red and rococo – was enticing. And, as my daughter Bella said, “Mum, I swear you just think: ‘free dinner and a taxi home, I can’t miss that’!”

She was right... I couldn’t miss it, and I’m so glad I didn’t!

After a fab introduction to the world’s biting blighters by Dr James Logan of the London School of Tropical Hygiene and Medicine (who knew that malaria could soon return to the UK, due to global warming?!), we repaired to Archipelago for a meal that included locusts in the side salad, and desserts of mealworms on blinis (Bushman’s Cavi-err) and chocolate coated scorpions.

I chose safely – duck breast salad, followed by bison steak and cassava chips (really delicious), and then a rosewater brulee.

But I did taste a locust (a bit like an overcooked sliver of crackling) - and a few mealworms, which were surprisingly sweet, served with cream cheese on the blini... 
I will never look at men who go fishing in the same way again. I now wonder if they take their leftover worms home and say, “Here you go, Love, knock up something nice with these will you?!”

CAPTION: bison steak at Archipelago

. At another recent event, at the Ice Tank, Colgate wanted to show us all how well their Pro-Relief toothpaste works against tooth sensitivity by getting us to smear the product onto our teeth before launching into nitrofoam, goat's cheese snowflakes and frozen yoghurt powder - from a menu designed by molecular chef Sean Wilkinson to set our gnashers on edge.

Read RocknRollerBaby's blog on this: yes that was me who kept realising I’d missed various molars – mistakenly believing only my front teeth were sensitive to cold foods. 

The thing I loved most was Sean’s crunchy beetroot cinder toffee. I hate beetroot in virtually every other form, but this was divine and I now have the recipe so we can replicate it at home.

Colgate have now very kindly sent me a new toothbrush to remove the last bits of the toffee from my teeth – the wonderful ProClinical A1500.

My first thought on using it was back to mosquitoes – it sounds eerily as if you have one buzzing in your mouth. And I was also unnerved by the fact that the brush did not seem to be oscillating, but just vibrating instead. But these features are due to the sonic wave action that actually delivers up to 32,500 strokes per minute – effectively reducing five times more plaque along the gum-line than a manual toothbrush.

What I love most about it is its tiny head, which easily reaches the back of the mouth, and the fact that my mouth feels zingily clean after using it.

I wonder if my father could be persuaded to use one of these. He recently told me how much he loves his manual toothbrush, “because it is so soft”.

“How long have you had it?” I asked.

“Oh, at least 10 years,” he said, with the same tone of slightly surprised pride he'd use if his car was still on the road after a decade in his possession.