Japan community tries to preserve traditional insect dishes

A community in central Japan is trying to preserve its dying tradition of catching and cooking local aquatic insects by encouraging younger people to learn the skills as catchers age.The food culture centers around the city of Ina in Nagano Prefecture, where caddisfly and stonefly larvae, colloquially known as "zaza," can be caught upstream in the nearby Tenryu River.The catches are often made into "tsukudani" - a common Japanese dish cooked by simmering a wide variety of ingredients such as fish, clam and seaweed in soy sauce, "mirin" cooking rice wine, sugar and sake.The name "zaza" is sa…READ FULL ARTICLE