[Sca-cooks] Frogs' legs query

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Sep 8, 2005, at 4:57 AM, Christina Nevin wrote:

> [popping out of lurkerdom]
>
> Hi everyone!
>
> I just acquired a kilo of frogs' legs and was wondering if anyone  
> has a good tried and true recipe for them.

As Mordonna states, it's hard to go wrong flouring and frying them.  
There are modern Chinese recipes that call for them to be fried and  
then served with a sauce, such as sweet-and-sour sauce made with  
pickled ginger, etc., but probably the best way to serve them that  
I've found is in Calvin Schwabe's "Unmentionable Cuisine", in which  
he speaks of (as usual, without giving too much detail, since few  
people will actually cook some of the things he's writing about) an  
Iraqi method where the legs are marinated for several hours in olive  
oil with plenty of crushed garlic, salt and pepper, then grilled and  
garnished with chopped parsley.

My mother-in-law puts them in soup <shudder>.

> And just to keep it on topic - has anyone ever seen mention of  
> these in period? (I can't remember if they're mentioned in the  
> Cloud Forest) Or is it a modern European thing?

IIRC, Le Menagier tells us how to catch frogs (I think you dapple for  
them like trout on a short pole, with a line baited with a shred of  
red rag), but gives no recipes or indication of whether any part  
other than the legs are eaten.

Adamantius


"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

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