Brave chefs up the ante FOOD Detective doesn't have many food dislikes - she can wolf down a plate of offal with the best of them and bravely tucked in when presented with chicken sashimi at a dinner in Tokyo. But she's never had the intestinal fortitude to stop at one of the food stalls offering deep-fried locusts or tarantulas in Southeast Asia. She'll need to rethink her prejudices, though, as insects are the next big thing in dining if the efforts of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, which is funding projects to help Asian communities harvest insects for protein, are anything to go by. Some of the world's leading chefs are flying the flag, too - Noma's Rene Redzepi served live ants to diners at a pop-up restaurant during the London Olympics (his Nordic Food Lab will again be doling out fermented grasshoppers, edible ants and moth larvae at Pestival 2013, a mobile arts festival focused on bugs to be held in London from April 18 to May 16); Mexican chef Enrique Olvera, of Pujol restaurant, is famous for his toasted flying ants and stink bug dishes (he left the critters at home rather than face the wrath of Australian Customs during his recent appearance at the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival), while Alex Atala is not averse to the odd tarantula creeping on to his menu at D.O.M. in Brazil. In Jerusalem, a plague of locusts carpeting the skies has had an unexpected benefit for chefs such as Moshe Basson, who has been catching the kosher critters by the dozen, coating them in flour, coriander seeds, garlic and chilli, deep frying and serving them to delighted diners at his restaurant, Eucalyptus. At home, meanwhile, Kylie Kwong has a veritable Bug Catcher of creepy crawlies on the specials list at her Billy Kwong restaurant in Sydney. Having spent the past couple of years cooking with Australian native plants and animals (Detective, February 23) she is now homing in on arthropods, with fried crickets with black bean and chilli, and Cantonese fried rice with roasted meal worms and chilli cricket sauce among the oddball offerings. Kwong sources her edible insects from entomologist Skye Blackburn, who "breeds them for me to order - I give her Kurrawong organic vegetables to feed them on her insect farm in Parramatta." Detective is game to try the fried crickets, and could perhaps even stretch to the roasted meal worms, but she's not sure she could stomach the next delicacy Kwong has planned - wood cockroaches - despite the plucky chef's assurances that the edible ones are nothing like the disgusting black creatures we're used to. "These are smaller and look more like a dark, wooden beetle," says Kwong, the only chef Detective has ever met who's willing to admit she's got cockroaches in the kitchen. I might lightly dust them in flour, then dip them in some freshly made beer batter, deep-fry and serve with my chilli, dried scallop and cricket sauce, or perhaps even Sichuan chilli. That'll teach the little buggers. kyliekwong.org MARK OLIVE is a man more than familiar with native Australian ingredients, including the odd insect, so it's fitting he's been signed up as chef de cuisine at Cicada Lodge in Katherine's Nitmiluk National Park. The renowned indigenous chef and TV personality plans to introduce ingredients from the region into Cicada's menus, and has developed a signature dish of crocodile tail seasoned with native herbs and spices, wrapped in paperbark and cooked for hours in a coal pit. Detective would like a serve of that, and make it snappy. cicadalodge.com. OLIVE may have carved out a niche for himself as a highly successful indigenous chef, but the industry has recognised that more needs to be done to encourage indigenous youth to enter the world of hospitality. The National Indigenous Culinary Institute was launched in Sydney last year, with trainee chefs offered the opportunity to work at three of Australia's best restaurants during a three-year accredited training course. This year the scheme is back, with more award-winning restaurants, including Quay, Aria and Icebergs, joining inaugural participants such as Rockpool, Guillaume at Bennelong and the Fratelli Fresh restaurants in mentoring students. "Our longer-term aim is for indigenous chefs to be a major force in the Australian restaurant industry," says Rockpool's Neil Perry. This year's intake of trainee chefs has just completed a four-week Skills for Success program at the William Angliss Institute and were placed with their restaurant mentors last week. NICI hopes to run another skills program for indigenous youth towards the end of the year and is looking for youngsters to get involved. More: 02 9125 5111; nici@angliss.edu.au.