There is a popular seafood center in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah which
serves a lot of live seafood. It’s notable due to the way the live
seafood offerings is presented – the customer is presented with a huge
array of see-through aquariums that hosts a variety of (still alive)
marine life from green lobsters to huge oysters and a lot of swimming
fish in the middle.
We decided to go for something a little unorthodox – frogs.
It tickled me to no end to see large frogs jumping around a container
for the benefit of the customer. I choose three large frogs to be
cooked. Poor frogs. 😉
The proprietor of the stall also recommended their eel.
The eels were swimming around lazily in their aquarium and the eels are
rather long, sinewy characters which looks rather like snakes with
water as their habitat instead of land.
I also chose an eel for our consumption. Poor eel. 😉
There were also local oysters on display, which were flat, solid
looking objects. I also choose a couple for our table but the
proprietor accidentally served it to another table, and that other
table unknowingly accepted, so we forgot about it, since it would take
a long time to prepare another batch.
Here’s a closer look at the eel dish. This was cooked Japanese style
in BBQ sauce with a touch of hot chilli (Sabah style) and it tastes
great! The eel came out hot and oily and it does get a little cloying
to eat too much eel, so small portions are the key.
This is a close up shot of the eel. The (poor) eel has been sliced
into bite-sized pieces – the dish bears a distinctive resemblance to
the live eels, except that it’s been chopped up. 😉 The colorization
and shape (round) of the eel is still visible though.
The frog dish was prepared with the WHOLE frog, which is great for
presentation purposes. This dish was cooked in a very bland sauce,
allowing the natural sweet frog meat taste to shine though.
The Chinese call frogs tien chi which translates to “sweet
chicken”. It’s an euphemism for frog. The frog dish has parts of the
frog still visible – there’s the much lauded frog legs, a little frog
thigh here and there, the body of the frog. It’s frog.
This is the best part of the meal – the frog was wonderfully
prepared, leaving the sweet, tender and juicy frog meat to shine
through. Hop on, frog! 😉
