ATt the beginning were the frogs, six in all, coiled in the hollow of a small cast-iron skillet, their trunks protruding, their fleshy thighs, previously browned in olive oil, arranged in a “Y”, dabbling for the last time in a pool of foaming butter, itself delicately flavored with garlic. The dish arrived still hot and, when the waitress placed it on the table, everyone heard this slight crackling, like a dull and diffuse crackling, the result of the caramelization of the flesh. While the noise brushed our ears, all I heard now was the song of crickets and the distant croaking of batrachians, the original soundtrack of the woods and thickets, of the countryside at the time of the long nights of winter. ‘summer.
We are seated at Allard’s at the height of a white tablecloth, in the middle of floral tapestries and a row of varnished woodwork with a patina worn by time. In this typical Parisian bistro, founded in 1932 and taken over by Alain Ducasse in 2013, frog legs, a jewel of French gastronomy, have never really left the menu. They hold pride of place here alongside Burgundy snails, beef bourguignons, roasted salmon steaks and all those old culinary acquaintances that the house has made a specialty of.
But for me, that day, frog legs seemed to belong to another category: that of gastronomic experiences that summon the imagination and create a whole host of chain reactions. In the center of the plate, the legs of the amphibians appeared to me like the legs of disarticulated puppets. “After all, he’s just a frog”, I said to myself, as if to encourage myself, bringing the first victim up to my lips. Once in the mouth, the texture of the flesh, both tender and lean, somewhere between that of poultry and freshwater fish, downright confused the tracks. As I peeled the meat with my teeth, the frog bones, which are more or less the size of a toothpick, piled up in a heap in one corner of the plate. The bigger the building grew, the more my hands grew in proportion, and the more I felt like an ogre. Was I in a restaurant or in a Grimms fairy tale? I asked that my dish be cleared quickly, at the risk of seeing a young prince appear on it, dazed, in a remake of the Frog Kingwith very marbled butter accents.
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