I never pass up a chance to make insect sauce, so I was thrilled when Friend of the Food Chain Leela Punyaratabandhu offered to send me some water-bug essence she brought back from Thailand. Maeng da na essence, or cà cuống essence as it's known in Vietnam, is a pheromone collected from the male Lethocerus indicus, a fearsome-looking denizen of rice paddies that makes our common cockroach look positively Lilliputian.…
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