“Wash the snails thoroughly to remove their saliva.” As opening lines in recipes goes, it’s not the most appetising. True, saliva and food probably go together more often than we’d like to think –  most often added garnish style by disgruntled serving staff – but it doesn’t generally feature in the recipe itself. “Next extract the snails from their shells and remove the excrement…” There is shit in the recipe. Actual shit. This is my first extreme French cooking challenge and already I feel I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.

I decide to ignore the recipe author’s helpful suggestions on where to find snails in the wild (I already know: it’s underneath my children’s shoes, having accidentally been turned crunchy) and buy tinned ones instead from my local supermarket. These have the additional benefit of being already prepared, thus avoiding dealing with all the body horrors. “This’ll be easy,” I tell myself, with the misplaced confidence of a group of teenagers in a horror film deciding to spend a night in an isolated wood cabin.

I choose the most popular snail recipe on Marmiton, cassolettes d’escargots. It looks manageable: a cream and wine sauce flavoured with garlic, shallots, parsley and mashrooms. Just, y’know, with some snails thrown in for fun.

It starts out simply enough. Chop a clove of garlic, one shallot and a handful of parsley. This is fine, I’m in a safe place.

Add the chopped aromatics into a bowl with 100g butter and squidge it together with your fingers. You can use a fork if you think there’s something wrong with having stinky butter fingers. No judgement.

At this point, I’m thinking, “I could slather this delicious butter on a baguette, bake it for 15 minutes, and it would be the best snack ever.” But then I remember about the snails and so continue, a little sadder than before.

The herby butter goes in a pan on a medium heat. While it’s melting into liquid deliciousness, you should be chopping up your mushrooms. Thank God for mushrooms. (Am I the first person ever to have said that ?) My theory is that they will disguise the snails, both with their colour and texture.

The mushrooms are cooked in the butter for about five minutes. While this is happening, it’s time to prepare the snails. As we’ve previously established, these are tinned snails with all the body fluids already removed for us. All that’s left is to drain the liquid they’re bathing in. I decide to rinse them, too. The label instructions don’t advise this but, I say, how can it hurt to make sure there isn’t even homeopathic-levels of saliva left over ?

Let’s take a moment to appreciate the H. R. Gigeresque form of the snails.

Spoil your pan of garlicky mushrooms by adding the snails (sad face). Pour in a glass of perfectly decent white wine and consider whether you are making the right choices in your life.

Cover the pan with a lid and leave to bubble gently for 10 minutes.

At this point you could either drink whatever wine you have left in prepartion for the tasting or, if like me you have small children and a sad duty to remain sober at least most of the time, you could get on with making the toast on which the snails will be served.

Before you know it it’s time to add the cream and reduce the sauce. And then, well, there’s nothing else for it but to spoon it on top of the toast and enjoy!

Yep, time to enjoy the snails on toast. Let’s get on with all the enjoying.

I start with a taste of the sauce. It’s delicious ! Of course it is, it’s butter, cream, garlic and wine – duh. I brave on with a mushroom. Again, yummerama. There’s nothing else for it. I fork a snail towards me, cut it into smaller pieces, prong a section and contemplate warily. I tell myself that I’m being stupid. It’s a lump of protein. Why is eating a snail any different from eating cow flesh, or mussel muscle ? Logically it isn’t, yet it absolutely is.

Repulsion is a funny thing. It’s so instinctive, so gut level. Thousands of generations’ wisdom telling us not to eat food that could give us poisoning, or to avoid creepy people who could harm us. Or is it socially driven ? Other cultures eat food that we in the West would consider unthinkable. And we only need to look back a few hundred years to a time when lobster was considered dirty.

All this thinking ain’t getting the job done, says the angry US Army drill sergeant who pops into my head whenever I’m being particularly heavy on the brainwork.

I stick a snail in my mouth and chew.

It’s fine! Largely due to the fact that it has barely any discerable flavour other than a hint of earthiness. The texture is similar to prawns or mussels. It’s gone in a flash. I feel proud. But I don’t want to eat any more.

“Do you want to try some ?” I ask Resident French Man hopefully. He is unenthusiastic but takes a mouthful. His reaction is similar to mine, yet he uses the word terroir in his description, making it sound a billion times fancier.

I force myself to eat at least three more snails and the rest of the toast and sauce, then I scrape the remaining snails in the bin. I tell myself we can have the rest of the sauce (with or minus the snails!) as an accompaniment to that night’s chicken but when the time comes, I can’t face it.

Cassolette d’Escargots

(Adapted from http://www.marmiton.org/recettes/recette_cassolettes-d-escargots_67273.aspx)

Serves four as a starter

INGREDIENTS

1 tin of escargots de Bourgogne
1 garlic clove
1 shallot
1 small bunch of parsley
100g butter
250g white mushrooms
150 ml crème fraîche
125ml white wine
nutmeg
salt and pepper

TO SERVE

Toasted white bread

METHOD

Finely chop the garlic, shallot and parsley. Mix together in a bowl with the butter.

Add a sprinkle of nutmeg, plus a grind of salt and pepper. Place in a frying pan and heat until melted and bubbling gently.

Chop the mushrooms into small pieces, then add to the pan with the flavoured butter and cook for 5 minutes.

Drain and rinse the snails. Add to the pan with the other ingredients.

Pour in the wine, cover and cook for 10 minutes.

Stir in the crème fraîche, then increase the heat to reduce the sauce.

Once the sauce has reached the desired consistency, take off the heat. Pour onto slices of toasted bread and eat as an apéritif or starter.

 

Enregistrer