New Delhi, Aug. 21 -- It tastes like chicken," says restaurant owner Watirenla Longkumer, referring to the field frogs that appear during the rainy season in Nagaland.

It's one of the many foods that the monsoon brings from the forests, fields and streams into the kitchens of the North-East. When night falls, a generations-old culinary tradition comes alive across the region, as locals, armed with torchlights and bags, wade into flooded paddy fields and streams in search of the croaking quadrupeds. Valued for their rich source of protein and medicinal properties, frogs are either cooked with bamboo shoots or fried to a crisp in these parts.

"We call it aloh in our dialect," says Longkumer, who grew up on the outskirts of Dimapur, amid s...