escargots

Today, I finished up another project. I finally cooked the snails I had found outside several weeks ago. Doesn't that broth just make you want to slurp them up? I thought it was too good to pass up, so I put it in with the butter when I sauteed them up.

Here are the reactions of my boys:

However, here is Isaac with pasta which has been mixed with the sauce, but not the escargots themselves.

Papa's evaluation of the escargots.

I think it would be helpful to have the information about how to do this yourself in one place. I had to look at a lot of different websites to figure out what was what.

How to prepare your very own escargots from those pests in your garden:

http://eatinggardensnails.blogspot.com/ This is a useful blog if you want more information about how to actually culture the snails, and it has some good ideas...
http://www.blogjam.com/2005/08/02/garden-snail-risotto/ And this person actually took good pictures of the process to compare the weird green color too... anyways..

Gina's steps to harvest garden snails:

1. First, you have to find some snails. I found mine when Isaac and I were outside playing. The grounds maintenance people blow some of the leaves into the hedges with their leafblowers. I had an OCD moment and started picking these leaves out of the hedges. I found that there were snails on the bottom of many of these leaves. So, I went home and found a bucket to put them in. I certainly wasn't going to let them be to get into everyone's gardens. I found that snails need plenty of air to breathe, but that they are good escape artists, so I put them in a large glass dish, covered it with cheesecloth-like material, and fastened with a rubber band. Oh, and if you are worried that the snails you have might not be okay, don't worry, they probably are. Apparently some French guy brought them to California during the Gold Rush and they weren't hot sellers, so he released them into the wild. Being the hermaphrodites that they are, they quickly made lots of snail babies and their offspring are all up and down the Pacific coast (and probably further, I guess that's been a few years since the Gold Rush). So they are probably Helix aspersa. (Just google it if you want to see pictures)

2. Next, you have to purge the snails. This is because they might have eaten something poisonous and you don't want to. There are several variations on how to do this, but I just put in a small dish with 1/4-1/2 inch water and sprinkled corn meal on the bottom of the glass dish they were in. They eat the corn meal and poop out all the leaf stuff and any bad things they may have eaten. You let them eat this for about a week. I let it go several weeks, actually, and they were fine. However, if you want to use a recipe where you stuff them back into their shells, apparently you should give them lime (the chalky stuff, not the citrus fruit) after about a week so they get enough calcium to keep the shell maintained. Also, you should probably rinse the snails a few times in here and clean out their dish, give them new food, so they really get purged well. If you can't do corn meal, you can also feed them lettuce greens. Just something that you feel is clean so they are not toxic.

3. Then, you have to make the snails estivate. I guess you don't HAVE to do this if you really want to boil them with their little heads sticking out, but I felt bad doing that. Also, this allows them to empty out their bowels one last time so you have a really clean snail. What you do is take the snails out of their food container, rinse them really well, and put them in a dry container with no food or water for at least 48 hours. They retract into their shells and go into estivation mode, which is the same as hibernation, but in the summer. It appears to be fine to let them go longer than 48 hours. If you think about it, they do this all the time, and it's natural. They aren't dead, so they should be okay if you can't get to them for a few days.

4. Then, you are ready to cook your snails. You boil some water, pick out your snails (which should all be nicely inside their shells), rinse them one last time, and plunge them into the boiling water for 2-5 minutes. I erred on the side of caution and did 5 minutes. I've even seen 15 minutes somewhere. I think this is totally variable but 5 minutes was fine. Oh, and at this point, they look absolutely like there is no way they are okay to eat, because it's yellowish-green around the foot. If the whole snail is green, that is a different story, probably, but yellow green around the foot is apparently okay, because... (see steps 6 and 7) Also the water turns a little green (or yellow by some reports) when you boil them. This is A-OK.

5. Then you drain the snails, and put them in cold water with a little salt for 15-60 minutes. I probably did about 30 minutes, inadvertently because I got busy with other steps. Also, you can cut off the end of the spiral if you want to here. I'm not sure how far down you go, so I just cut off the very tippy tip.

6. Now you are going to simmer the snails in a Court Bouillon, or just a vegetable stock with a little wine. So you have to make some stock. This was where I ran into trouble with the first blog, because she talked about using garden weeds and a) I am not in the UK and b) I don't have a garden full of weeds to choose from. So, I used this recipe for vegetable stock: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/basic-vegetable-stock/Detail.aspx
I added a splash of (cheap) white wine right before adding the water. I have no idea if it made a difference, but ah! It was such a pretty stock. When I found actual Court Bouillon recipes later, it looks like you use half a liter white wine per liter water. Wow. I don't know, I'll have to try it some day. Also with the veggie stock, you don't have to use specifically the veggies they list. I think you kind of use what you have. The key is cooking them on high in the oil before hand.
I digress.

7. So, you have made the veggie stock/Court Bouillon, and now you simmer the snails in it for 60-90 minutes. This makes them more tender.

8. I think at this point the snails are comparable to how they would be from a can. So you can pick your favorite recipe online and go for it. I was personally sick and tired of all this work for 9 whole escargots, so I just sauteed them in a lot of butter, splash of olive oil, a clove of garlic, chopped, and a bit of shallot, also sliced. The veggie stock had reduced a lot so I threw that in there too. It was just too pretty to throw away.

9. Serve to your favorite cute boys, and when they disapprove, eat them all yourself.

That, my friends, is how to turn a garden pest into an edible delicacy.