I fell to my addiction to frog the other day with very painful consequences. Frog isn't a staple of Hong Kong cuisine, so I returned to an old favourite of mine, a Sichuan restaurant that's just around the corner from where I live at the moment. I remembered that the Sichuan kitchen does a yummy number where they cook the frog by stirring it with small, very hot stones. Called something like "special stone frog".
However, once I got into the restaurant, I found that there's another Sichuan frog recipe that I haven't tried yet. It was quite expensive, but hey! you only live once. And it had five chillis next to it, whereas the special stone only had three. You know I love spicy food.
I learned many things that evening.
1) You don't want to order extra spicy stuff in an authentic Sichuan restaurant. The mild stuff would probably be illegal in Europe, so stick to three chilis next to your menu item
2) The Mala Frog is fried. Yuck. The whole point about frog is it's succulence. Whats the point of crispy frog?
3) The dish I ordered was not expensive because this was an expensive restaurant, or because the dish was extra special in some way. It was expensive because there were five frogs in there. You may remember I felt a bit embarrased about having eaten three in one sitting back in Singapore. I felt very very greedy eating five. And I got very very full.
4) The locals will find it very amusing to see a foreigner eating five frogs on his own, tears flowing from the spicyness...
So, my advice to you, my fellow frogoholics: if you're getting Sichuan food, get the special stone.
