Southern Africa · Volume 20, Desert, Coast and Funge
Phane
Botswana, and the Oshiwambo north where it is omagungu
Illustration
- Time
- Hands on 15 minutes · Waiting 20 minutes
- Researched
- Researched from 209 sources in the brief
Gonimbrasia belina, the mopane emperor moth caterpillar, harvested twice a year in step with the rains. The regional trade is worth tens of millions of dollars annually, harvested largely by rural women, with prices spiking June to November after the harvesters have already sold cheap, so most of the margin accrues to traders rather than to the people who did the work. This is also the best-measured technique in the three countries. A response-surface optimisation across boiling times of 0 to 20 minutes and drying temperatures of 40 to 60°C found the optimum to be boiling for 20 minutes and drying at 40°C, giving 49.4 per cent protein by dry weight, coliforms below 1.5 log cfu/g, crude fibre 13.6 per cent, fat 20.2 per cent, iron 19.0 mg and zinc 17.9 mg per 100 g, and moisture below 7 per cent. And the counter-intuitive result is the useful one: hotter drying is worse. Drying at 40°C rather than 60°C preserved protein better, and the microbial kill is done by the boil, not the drying. Hot drying case-hardens the cuticle and traps moisture inside.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. Soak 20 minutes, then about 15 minutes in the pan after an untimed boil.
Ingredients
- 250 ml dried mopane worms
- 5 ml salt, for the soak
- as needed hot water, for the soak
- as needed water, for the boil
- 25 ml oil
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 clove garlic, crushed
- 2 tomatoes, cubed
- a dash soy sauce
- 2 tbsp tomato sauce
To serve
- to serve pap or ting
Method
- Soak the worms in hot water with the salt for 20 minutes, until they swell. Drain.
- Boil them in a little water, then drain again.
- Heat the oil and fry the onion and garlic until transparent.
- Add the tomatoes, then stir in the worms and cook 10 minutes more.
- Add a dash of soy sauce and the tomato sauce. Stir and simmer 5 minutes.
- Serve hot on pap or ting.
Notes
They are also eaten dry as a crisp snack, and in Botswanan practice cooked fresh in hot ashes.
The method is Botswana Youth Magazine's mophane stew (2 March 2015). Hendrina Newaka's omaungu in the Namibian Food Print (World Food Programme with the Namibia University of Science and Technology) soaks 2 cups of worms 10 to 15 minutes in plain water, cooks them 20 minutes with onion, three tomatoes and a green pepper, then adds butter or oil, a packet soup powder and ombilikawu, the dried wild garlic, and serves them with mahangu pap. Neither source fries the worms on their own.
What a modern chef changes
The measured parameters used as written, and the ingredient treated as what it is
Rungs 4 and 6
Method
- If processing fresh or under-dried worms, boil 20 minutes in salted water then dehydrate at 40°C to under 7 per cent moisture. Those are published, optimised figures and there is no reason to guess. Your dehydrator does exactly this.
- Treat them as a dried umami ingredient, not only as a protein. At 49.4 per cent protein with a flavour between dried mushroom and dried shrimp, a portion ground to powder in the spice grinder is a seasoning of real force. A teaspoon into a bogobe, or into the seswaa liquor reduction, does what a stock cube pretends to do.
- Fry harder and shorter than you think, and finish with acid. The failure mode is a soft, muddy relish; you want crisp edges, which means a hot pan, a dry worm and no crowding. A spoonful of ting liquor at the end lifts a relish that is otherwise all fat, salt and earth.
Notes
Part Four