Stirfried bullfrog with Szechuan pepper anyone?

I have been really neglecting my blogging this past six months.  Yet again, in my defence, I’ll say I’ve been extremely busy, also I’ve been travelling a heck of a lot (amassed nearly 250,000 air miles in the past 7 months) – and the tragic circumstances at the beginning of the summer meant I’ve not really been in the best of moods to be honest.

Anyway, there are several stories and observations (and thousands of photos) garnered from my travels sitting in the pending folder – so I’ll try to finish those soon.

I’ll start with tonight.

For the past few days, I’ve been in Shanghai – working with a new client and delivering some digital marketing training for them. 

Tonight I had a (mostly) splendid Szechuan dinner (in Shanghai’s xian tian di district) with a colleague who’s an Israeli German Anglophile currently living in Manhattan (I tweeted from Tokyo last week that here I was, an Englishman living in Hong Kong drinking Irish Guinness in a Tokyo (Spanish) Tapas bar listening to Dixieland jazz with an Australian colleague based in New York – does my head in sometimes). 

As has been written here before, I’m a new(ish) vegetarian – but I eat fish (‘Pescitarian’).  Apart from a being a constant source of mirth amongst my colleagues and friends (AND FAMILY!) it causes all sorts of problems in China when I try to eat out.  (Vegetable fried rice inevitably comes with pork of course).  And so, I agonised over a decision whether or not frog (on the menu) was meat or fish (my colleague and I decided it was not Kosher anyway).  I determined it was ‘kind of fish like’ (it swims – but by that logic, are dogs on my acceptable meat list?) and therefore edible (I think the frog <or field chicken> thought otherwise).  Actually I was wrong.  It was close to inedible.  I’ve eaten frogs legs in France of course, but this was my first stab at bullfrog.  Yuk.  An unsatisfactory chickeney, gristly affair made worse by the countless number of small (knuckle??) bones embedded in the fatty flesh.  Yuk.  All of this was made worse by (and I knew it was going to be spicey) the mouthnumbingly spiciness of it all.  Bloody hell – excrutiating.  Now I’ve had time to research it, I should have known better – but at the time I did not know what hit me.  Putting a morsel in one’s mouth is OK at first – then your lips tingle.  Then the underside/side of your tongue starts going numb.  Then you get a (hard to describe) lemony, coriander, tingly, zincy taste.  Next, your mouth is on fire and your throat constricts.  Vile.  It’s all caused by copious quantities of Szechuan pepper – I must have eaten it before but never in this quantity (or authenticity I guess).  

From Wiki: Sichuan pepper has a unique aroma and flavour that is not hot or pungent like black or white pepper, or chili peppers, but has slight lemony overtones and creates a tingly numbness in the mouth (caused by its 3% of hydroxy-alpha-sanshool). It has an alkaline pH and a numbing effect on the lips when eaten in larger doses. 

No kidding. 

To be avoided.  Unpleasant. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichuan_pepper

M

Go-Karting Cornwall 2009