What is it?
Have you ever heard of pupae (the young silk worm)? Well it may shock you but it can actually be eaten if you know how to prepare it. Push aside your fear and you can enjoy its amazing taste in the end. The juicy, sweet, nutty, rich taste of roasted pupae blends with aromatic lemon leaves; just a small bowl of roasted pupae, and you can finish 2 bowls of white rice without adding any other dishes or soup.
Roasted Pupae With Lemon Leaves (Nhộng Rang Lá Chanh) – photo by Vy’s kitchen (Flickr)
How do you make it?
The Roasted Pupae With Lemon Leaves dish is “super easy” to cook. However, the pupae pre-processing stage seems to be a demanding task, especially when you fear to deal with the crawling alive pupae. Fortunately you can ask the seller at the local market to prepare them ready for you to cook.
Simple & Tasty, you just need to use some salt (fish sauce) and lemon leaves – photo by sierade (Flickr)
After buying the “processed pupae” from the market, you need to gently clean the pupae, then put them into a small stove, pour the water just till the water level right over the pupae. Add some salt and boil it for 2 – 3 minutes, then pour it out to dry out. In the next step, you prepare 2 or 3 lemon leaves and mince them thinly.
Finally, heat up a small amount of cooking oil in the pan, add the pupae and quickly stir it, the tip is “quickly but gently” because the pupae is really easy to break. Then, you can add some fish sauce into the pan and stir again, remember this one thing, just a little bit of fish sauce only because the pupae infuses spices very well and you definitely will not want to eat a bitter salty dish. Continue to stir until the pupae become dried, then add the lemon leaves, stir for extra 30 sec and turn off the heat. The final product will be a bowl of shiny gold pupae and attractive flavor exuded from the lemon leaves. Enjoy!
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