Cooking with hops. Frog with betel leaf and galangal flower.

BBQ frog stewed with betel leaves, galangal flower and aromatic wood

This is a very different, delicious North Thai recipe for frog.

Serves 4 memorably

The meat:

Two whole plump barbequed frogs, with skin on. 

At first they look and smell grim. Never fear. Don’t be a ‘doubting Thomas’ like I was ;-)

The vegetables:

Hung wai – the white things in the bowl that look like a cross between palm heart and bamboo.  

Betel leaves – “bai chorpoo” (Pepper leaf)

Kaffir lime leaf

Thai Eggplant – apple eggplant & pea egg plant 

Pak tam leung – a type of creeping morning glory (sounds rude, no?)

Ja-kaan – aromatic wood.

Dok kha – galangal flower

1-2 tbsp roasted dry red chilli flakes (See tom saap recipe for method)

100g / ½ cup ground roasted dry sticky rice

25g – 2 tbsp fresh garlic, peeled & crushed

750ml – 3 cups Water

30ml / 2 tbsp Cooking oil

1. Chop the frogs into large chunks
2. Cut the Ja-kaan wood into small pieces then split into quarters. Mix the wood with the chunks of frog.
3. Get your greens ready – like in the photo above and below.
4. Heat a wok or frying pan and sauté garlic and roasted chilli for 1-2 minutes until it smells great
5. Add the frog and chunks of ja-kaan wood. Add a little water to the wok and stir with wooden spoon (to stir any tasty garlic and roasted chilli that sticks to the pan into the ‘sauce’
6. Put the 750ml water in a saucepan.
7. Move the frog, wood and ‘sauce’ from the wok/pan into the potful of water
8. Add the slower cooking ingredients (hung wai, thai eggplants, andf also the kaffir lime leaves)  
9. Simmer 5-10 minutes gently
10. Next add the betel leaves, galangal flowers, and quick cooking greens
11. Stir in the ground roasted rice. This thickens the gravy and gives an incomparable rich flavour. You are ready to eat.

Betel leaves, Galangal flowers and Cha-om (Acacia/wattle shoots)

The galangal flowers are spicy and delicious, the betel leaves give a peppery depth and the roasted chilli is just wonderful in most Northern dishes., -

Chop and mix the chunks of frog and the aromatic wood 

Heat the wok, Add oil and fry the frog, wood, garlic and dried roasted chilli flakes

Add a little water, and stir to 'deglaze' the pan. This is a 'chefs trick' - it's also how you make gravy! The stuff stuck to the pan has a lot of flavour, and when you add liquid and rub it off into the liquid with a wooden spoon, it makes a great tasting sauce.

Put a pot or casserole dish with water on the stove and empty the wok and its contents into this. The wok should be clean. If not, add more water and rub the 'baked on' bits off into the water and add it to the pot.  

Check the colour of the 'water' in the pot. This is flavoursome tasty garlic chilli, frog and wood sauce already. It's just a bit thin and runny right now. 

Add the vegetabless that take the longest to cook. That’s the pea eggplant, apple eggplant, kaffir lime leaves and the 'hung wai' (the stuff that looks like palm hearts)

It should look like this around this point. Simmer for around 7-10 minutes to cook the veggies through properly.  

The flavour will come out of the kaffir lime. Delicious, but it’s not where we want to be yet! 

When the eggplants are tender, add in the 'delicate greens'. That would be the cha-om, the betel leaves and the galangal flowers. 

The green leafy veg will cook in minutes - so add in the ground roasted rice ('khao krua').

And here we have the almost finished product. You need to taste it. But I don't need to tell you that. It’s an essential part of cooking!

If I pass on nothing else of use whatsoever - just remember, taste as you cook and adjust.

Taste and season. Taste and tweak.

Here is the finished dish, ready to serve.  In a restaurant, we'd make this "no twigs and sticks' for the final service, and present it in a more sophisticated manner - but we are sitting on the floor family style with this one, and it is a local recipe that was handed down from generation to generation. This is one that foreigners and city people don't know about.

In the North this is eaten with white sticky rice, which is rolled into balls and dipped into the gravy.

I can’t bring myself to fully commit and eat totally with the fingers yet, so I am still very much “a foreigner”.
I still get my own plate, spoon and fork and a wee bowl, and I sit a tad strangely on the floor.

We all sat around the table the first few days for my benefit but it became a bit too much effort, and ‘When in Rome” should also apply to North Thailand, where the hospitality is genuine.

About the frogs – they smelled bloody horrible, semi barbequed from the market. It’s ok –they don’t get eaten like that.

The skin is a great feature and it is barbequed to enhance the aroma for the finished dish.

After the cooking these have the texture of chicken, and being large, they are quite meaty.

For me, the combination of the betel leaf and galangal flower combined with the ja-kaan wood defines this dish.

Galangal flower is very different from the root and leaf – it’s quite spicy and peppery.

I’ll definitely be cooking this dish around Asia – albeit more tidily.

When I do, it willl be presented as an upmarket dish with heirloom flavours and pedigree – a celebration of local culture and family cooking, but knife and fork ready.

But I do have to say if I ever enjoyed sucking my fingers clean, it was while eating this. If you can find the ingredients, jump on it right away. It is a dish that you have to try before you croak.