Crunchy Frog Pasta

Eat At Your Own Risk!

I noticed that Elisson wrote about a deelish-looking recipe for cheese blintzes, and it reminded me that I hadn't posted a recipe in quite a while.

This recent change in my eating habits has necessarily altered my home cooking. When you have to throw out 30 years of experience cooking mostly high-fat, high-calorie (but extremely tasty) foods, it takes a while to find new favorites worth posting.

This is an obscure Neapolitan dish known as:

RANA PUTTANESCA

INGREDIENTS:
1 lb ground lamb
1 cup crumbled feta cheese
1 tbsp minced anchovies
1 cup chopped green olives, pimientos optional
1 cup diced Roma tomatoes, deseeded
1/4 cup breadcrumbs
1/2 onion
1 cup chopped red bell pepper
1 medium bullfrog
4 cloves garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp capers
4 tbsp chicken broth
1/2 tbsp rosemary
salt and pepper to taste


Add olive oil to pan and wait a few seconds until it is hot but not smoking. Add onion and saute until tender. Dump in the ground lamb, and cook until almost browned. Add tomatoes, peppers, anchovies, garlic, broth & rosemary and saute briefly. Salt & pepper to taste. Go light on the salt, you're about to add olives, capers and feta cheese!

Before lamb is completely cooked, add olives, stir well and take the pan off the heat. Toss in chunky, crumbled feta, capers and breadcrumbs. Return pan to heat, lay pithed frog over mixture and stir gently until frog is warmed through. If frog's throat sac swells in the heat, vent with a sharp knife or fork.

Serve over al dente pasta, and sprinkle with chopped parsley.

This dish is sometimes confused with a staple of South Carolina cuisine called Frogmore Stew, but to replicate Frogmore Stew, you would need to add plenty of water, corn, red potatoes, and, of course, more frogs.

Buon Appetito!