Crapaud

I disobeyed the master's wishes, and bought a new book.
This little treasure was £2.50 in the Red Cross bookshop, and if I wasn't so tired I would come up with a clever joke about how red and cross it made the boyfriend, but you can just use your imagination.
The cover is a bit confusing to me, but maybe that's just because I've never been to the Caribbean. I mean, all you lucky dogs who summer there must instantly think 'Jamaica!' when you see a bunch of parsley. Or 'Barbados!' when a half peeled orange rolls toward you. Of all the cookbooks I buy, my favorite ones tend to be the specific county cuisines. I know I'll probably never go to these places, so at least I can try to recreate the flavour at home... with a nice bunch of parsley.
In all seriousness, I bought this book because there is a recipe for frogs legs in it. I still had a half a kilo in the freezer from my previous effort, and was tentatively on the lookout for something different. They could have given it a better name than Crapaud though.
I looked everywhere for ground cloves, but obviously there's no such thing. Our coffee grinder went gently into that good night a while ago and I haven't gotten around to replacing it, so crappy pestle and mortar take the stage. Reminding myself how much I hate cloves doen't make the process in any way satisfying, and when that's followed by grating the onion I feel really hard done by.
I let the concoction sit and think about what it's done in the corner for an hour, and then flour and fry. Unlike chicken, or whatever, frog never quite aquires that golden hue. If anything, it just goes paler the longer if fries. Very attractive.
Result: Quite nice. A little like wings, but more chewy, with a pretty mild taste. It would have benifited from a bit more salt, maybe, and you can't really taste the cloves (yes!). The main flavour is onion, and lime juice once you add some. I fried up some little lumps of onion from the marinade and it all goes together and everything. Yeah, I would give it a medium score.
So, I'm glad I tried it and would have it again, but lets not get carried away by the excitement of the thing, yeah? You're eating frogs

Frogs' Legs, Vietnamese Style

I get paid in two days, and having enjoyed the end of the summer a little too thoroughly I was down to my last £10 this afternoon. What would one do with such riches? Go to the cinema? Use it to buy lunch tomorrow? Um, keep it in the bank? No, all wrong. You guys have no imagination. I went to Chinatown and bought a kilo of frogs' legs, duh.
I'm not a nut by the way, I specifically wanted to try another one of Floyd's recipes. I didn't really do the Ginger Chicken justice, and it's been haunting my dreams, so this is make or break.
In case you're interested this delicacy set me back £8.50, the equivalent of chicken would be less than half that, but elsewhere online prime leg of frog fetches around £16 per kilo - so remember, shop local.
And one last thing, in case I haven't put you off food entirely so far, this is what Wikipedia says about frogs' legs:
'Frog muscle does not resolve rigor mortis as quickly as warm blooded muscle (chicken, for example), so heat from cooking can cause fresh frogs legs to twitch'
I'm so glad the ones I got were frozen. If you read the rest of the article there is a revolting guide to hunting and skinning frogs, but even having read that and almost thrown up in my mouth I still want to go ahead.
I'm making a few, substitutions, of course. I didn't have any brown sugar, and I'm using chilli flakes instead of fresh chillies. Almost every recipe I've made so far calls for shallots, I have never bought one, but I swear that's just the same as onions, right? The biggest deal, I guess is that I'm swapping coconut milk for cream, I had some left over from the souffle, and if this goes on I might as well spread it straight on my thighs...
Look how cute the froggie legs look in their individual little bags! It so convenient and I can defrost them with boiling water without scalding them. I'm only using half of the box, so if I find anything else to turn the rest into, I have that option (hmmm, isn't Halloween coming up?)
Is it a cheat to use curry powder instead of assembling all the spices individually? That too is left over from my souffle making days, at least this recipe is simple!
I make noodles like Floyd suggests and pack the whole thing into my lunch box, it looks and smells quite nice, but I'll have to wait until tomorrow to try it.
Result: How to win friends, influence people, and ruin everyone's appetite at work.
1) Bring in something weird for lunch, make sure everyone knows what you're eating and give them a taste
2) Get into an exciting conversation about all the weird stuff you have ever tried and, if possible, where you travelled to try it
3) Complain about the scarcity of said foodstuffs in your locale
4) Turn the discussion onto something controversial like veal, make sure your view is diametrically opposed to everyone else's, try and heat things up by mentioning any revolting details you gleaned from late night sensationalist TV programs on Five
5) Secret surefire way to get everyone to agree with you, two words - Your mum.

No not really. My mind was kind of drifting as I was trying to think of an appropriate adjective for the texture of frogs' legs. The taste is really minimal (maybe it was all that cream) but you can definitely tell you're not eating chicken, it's a lot more fiborous. The sauce was lovely, Floyd is great. Even I couldn't mess this up, but really frog is nothing special. I would make it again, but with something a little more... readily available.
At least nobody was sick