How to cook bugs

Here's what's been cooking up at Manresa lately. Not something pretty – and pretty tasty – on a plate as usual. This one is just a tad more macabre. Chef's been personally cooking bugs that our lovely gardener Cynthia had collected just for this purpose.

This was just another day in the life of a biodynamic garden. You've heard of that garden, yes? The procedure is called the ashing of pests - such a poetic name. It calls for collecting the pests that infest a farm, dry roasting them in a cast iron pan until they are burnt to a crisp. The cooked bugs are then crushed in a mortar until they are turned into ash, and mixed with ash from a wood burning stove. The resulting dust is sprinkled around the garden, particularly in the areas most affected by the bug infestation.

The ash is supposed to prevent the bugs returning. Let this be a lesson to you bugs: don't f*** with my garden. I think that's the message – a slightly less gruesome procedure than mounting dead bugs like butterfly specimen and sticking them in the ground as a warning, huh? And it certainly beats spraying pesticides in my book.

I wonder if the ashing of the pests work in life outside the garden as well? What do you think? Don't you have one or two pests in your life you wouldn't mind grinding into ash? Well, ok, before someone calls the cops on me, I certainly didn't mean grinding them into ash, but, you know, perhaps a bit of hair, or a half eaten sandwich from their plate. Wouldn't it be great? A sprinkle here, a sprinkle there, and p-o-o-f!