Adobong Palaka: Les Cuisses de Grenouilles Filipino Style

With the slopes of the Sierra Madre boondocks, the lake shore of Laguna de Bay and the green ricefields in between as his childhood playground, Tutubi was able to experience so many things many kids these days won't even bother with malls in their minds and computers, cellphones and PSPs in their hands.

On Laguna de Bay's lake shore, locals call wawa, he learned to swim. He experienced waking up early at dawn to harvest shrimps from fish and shrimp traps called baklad, catch fish using nets and sometimes with his hands for biya (goby fish), pauton (sometimes bangayngay), ayungin, tilapia, tinikan, gurami, dalag (mudfish), hito (catfish) fishes, dive to gather tulya (clams) and paros (freshwater mussel) and duhol (freshwater sea snake) that once thrived in the lake before the janitor fish invaded the once beautiful, now moribund, lake. The lake also once provided lotus seeds, called kalabanga, that's eaten by locals.

On the slopes of Sierra Madre, he learned to climb trees or harvest fruits e.g. lanzones (langsat), santol (wild mangosteen), aratilis (muntingia), mami and dambo (malay apple) and catch spiders for spider-fighting (spider wrestling) and sometimes trek up to the Tatlong Krus (Three Crosses) on top of the hill fronting his hometown and the waterfall down to the cold water of the creek feeding the river.

In the ricefields, he used to gather cherry tomatoes, and other vegetables grown alongside rice, run after field mice in muddy fields, gather suso (snails) and kuhol (escargot for the French) and lastly, the subject of this post, catch and eat edible frogs, called palakang kabakab, by following farmers preparing the rice field for planting by mowing it with a carabao or hand tractor called kuliglig or kubota or people using some sort of DIY gizmo for electrofishing. Some frog hunters hunt the edible amphibians at night using flashlights where frog eyes can be easily spotted.

Chinese Edible Frog, East Asian Bullfrog, or Taiwanese Frog (Hoplobatrachus rugulosus) found in East Asia particularly Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Myanmar, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. It's an introduced species in the Philippines and Sabah/Borneo.

The frogs he caught were decapitated by chopping off the head and maimed by cutting the limbs (at least the webbed part). The frogs are skinned alive using ash on his hands to peel off the slippery (and icky) skin, then eviscerated to remove the entrails. The lean meat was cooked by deep frying, the only cooking style he knew at that time.

This time, years after he saw and ate icky, exotic creatures he used to catch and eat, Tutubi saw live frogs for sale at the Lung Center Sunday Market that quickly brought back childhood memories of "Tutubi the Hunter" days. He bought half kilo of the leaping amphibians, six pieces in all, that he had decapitated, maimed and skinned by the frog vendor, unlike in those days when he used to do the "barbaric" task himself.

meet the vendor and butcher, from Cabiao, Nueva Ecija doing the dirty job of preparing the frog

grenouilles Filipino style: adobong palaka, frogs simmering marinade of vinegar, soy sauce, garlic and bay leaf

People of Pampanga, with the evident culinary prowess of Kapampangans, are proud of their betute, recipe of frogs stuffed with meat (a la relleno) and marinated in cane vinegar and soy sauce.

In France, people also eat frog legs, called "les cuisses de grenouilles" in French, cooked using a simple recipe with the legs dipped in flour before frying eggs, lemon juice, parsley sprigs, bread crumbs, salt, pepper.

So, how would Tutubi describe the taste of frogs? It actually has the texture and taste of chicken unless your mind wants to reject the delicacy from your mouth thinking it's a frog bone tickling your palate.

Adobong Palaka, anyone?

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Notes:

Where to buy edible frogs:

A kilogram of live frogs, locally called palakang kabakab in Laguna, costs P250.00 (about US$5.50) at the Lung Center Sunday Market. There are cheaper ones sold at stalls on the highway of Laguna, particularly on the stretch of Bay, Calauan and Victoria towns (an area dominated by gardens selling plants, seedlings and flowers).