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Shelling out for snails

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In Britain snails can go about their business in safety; hardly anyone wants to eat them. Not so in Portugal, where baby snails are tossed in hot mustard oil before being washed down with vinho verde. The Swiss appreciate them removed from their shells and served atop a potato cake in a rich mushroom sauce.

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They are popular in Spanish bars, served as tapas. They are often stewed with ham and sausage in wine and herbs. In Italy they are stewed in olive oil with mushrooms, onions, garlic and herbs.

Cantonese diners regard snails as an inferior form of seafood. Ni Zan, author of the 13th century Food System of the Yunlin House, gives two recipes. In both, snails are marinated in sugar and then either poached in chicken stock or eaten raw after further marination in rice wine, salt and fennel.

It is the French, however, who have harnessed the snail. The Larousse Gastronomique (the French chef's Bible) lists six recipes, including snail soup. Chef George Blanc, with three Michelin stars, serves five different snail dishes at his restaurant in France.

Snails are well connected with expensive relations, belonging to the same mollusc family as the abalone. Green lipped mussels also are molluscs, as are clams. Only two varieties of snails are commonly eaten: helix pomatia, the large Burgundian type, are the ones most often captured for restaurants, and helix nemoralis, the small grey shelled variety called petit gris by the French.

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Preparing snails for the table is a laborious business. They must be starved for at least three days to purge them of the possibly poisonous vegetation they may have eaten on their meanderings. They are then fed on lettuce or vine leaves to 'fatten them up' for two to three weeks. The shells must then be scrubbed free of dirt before they are dropped into boiling water and cooked for five minutes.

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