Name: Sautéed Frogs’ Legs (Per Friggere, Accommodare in Agresta le Rane)
Yield: Serves 4 as a main course
Cuisine: Italy
Ingredients: crushed sea salt; 3 tbsp chopped parsley; 1-2 cloves garlic, crushed; 2½ fl oz/⅓ cup 175 ml olive oil; large pinch of pepper; 3 oz/⅔ cup/90 g flour; ½ tsp salt; 12-14 pairs frogs’ legs (about 3 lb/1.4 kg); freshly ground black pepper

Preparation info

Serves
4
as a main course

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Great Cooks and Their Recipes

By Anne Willan

Published 1977

About

This is the recipe for the frogs so beloved of Pope Pius IV. They are sauteed with parsley and garlic, or plainly fried and served with agresto (tart grape juice) thickened with egg yolks. Frogs are still a speciality of Pius IV’s native Lombardy, where they live in the flooded rice fields of the Po valley.

Remove the head with its big mouth, and cut off the feet up to the first joint, and leave to soak in cold water, changing the water in the course of eight hours, so that t