Insects as Sous-Chefs

Check out this amazing tea called the Gui Fei Cha, or concubine tea.

"It's produced by a unique method: it's briefly attacked by insects, tea green leaf hoppers. The plant's natural defense to the invasion changes the flavor of the leaf and unexpectedly yields a distinctive floral almost honey-like aroma and taste to the tea."

  It reminds me of a recipe that I came across in one of Sandor Katz's writings for a cheese called casu marzu that is made through a process of allowing maggots to hatch and digest goats milk into the product for humans to consume. As he indicates, it may be difficult to have a taste of such extraordinary delicacies in the United States due to our "strict" (or biased) food policies.

-Liana