Clean the cicadas, put them in a bowl of salt water overnight. Rinse again, drain, remove legs and wings and the outer body, the parts that the cicadas are going to discard when they get ready to hide for the next 17 years. At this stage they look like really tiny shrimp.
Put them in a big bowl, add a splash of cream sherry or Chinese wine, a chopped scallion or green onion, a tsp of minced ginger root, a tsp of Chinese huajiao prickly ash buds or American black peppercorns. Marinate for 10 or 15 minutes. Drain when ready to stir-fry them.
Get your wok or pan hot, add cicadas and a liberal splash of cooking oil, stir-fry until crispy. Add a splash or two of soy sauce, stir-fry until the soy sauce is mostly gone, remove the cicadas to a serving bowl, sprinkle liberally with salt and maybe some ground black pepper. Or add a little minced hot pepper and a little minced or crushed garlic, just before removing them from the heat of frying.
Here’s another recipe:
Just go to the grocery store.
The adults flying and buzzing are just looking to breed. I don't even know if they eat anything as adults. Once they breed and the females lay their eggs they die. The eggs hatch, the larvae crawl undreground and eat for many years until it is time to come out 13 or 17 years later and look for some love again.
Other species of cicadas don't synchronize, so they come out after a few years but not by the millions. Some of the periodic ones also miscount time so a few may come out early or late.
“ a tsp of Chinese huajiao prickly ash buds.”
Darn. I’m all out of Chinese huajiao prickly ash buds.
Oh well. Guess I’ll make a nice T bone steak for dinner instead.
L