Bugs

[bpearis]

The first article in The Man Who Ate Everything, you listed your then food phobias -- number one being insects. You said you'd tackle that one after all the others had been overcome. The article has you vanquishing the rest of them but you don't get around to trying the creepy crawlies.

Yet, back when you co-hosted NY Eats with Ed Levine, you listed Peter Menzel and Faith D'Aluisio's Man Eating Bugs as one of your top five must-own books on food. Does this mean you've conquered your last fear? If so, what are the best, most delicious insect dishes you've had?

[Jeffrey Steingarten]

Very good question. In truth, the two food aversions I was temporarily content to live with were dislike of bugs and of desserts in Indian restaurants. Although I didn't realize it at the time, perhaps because it had never occured to me, I also had a strong aversion to eating pigs' brains.

I conquered my fear of eating bugs on trips to Mexico and to Thailand. Writers hate repeating themselves, except when they're desperate, and so I'll refer you to "It Must've Been Something I Ate," now out in paperback, for the answer to your questions about bugs--especially the introduction and the chapter on Thailand, where I made the greatest breakthroughs. That's also where I conquered my suppressed phobia towards pigs' brains, at a Yunnanese restaurant in the Thai city of Chiangmai, to which my Thai friend had taken me to feast on chickens' brains,. This was only one of many occasions on which he tried to gross me out. They weren't serving any, but had the more common and ordinary pig's brains.

When I returned from Thailand, my only aversion involved desserts in Indian restaurants. And then, astoundingly, on a trip to India last October, I overcame this last obstruction to my becoming a perfect omnivore. I'll report on the trip, though probably not much about desserts, in the April Vogue. My only confusion now is whether I prefer a good Rasmalai to a fine.....