Snails are one of the products considered extremely exotic in Russia, but in France they are often served as an appetizer with herbs and aromatic oil, with hot sauces or just with white bread. If you want to handle these clams like a regular Frenchman or a sophisticated Frenchwoman, you should familiarize yourself with the rules for their use.
How snails are eaten
Snails are eaten boiled or baked; their meat is often an ingredient in a more complex dish. Before cooking, shellfish are washed, then boiled or baked. If you want to boil the snails, bring a few liters of water to a boil, then add the snails and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes. Remove the meat from the casings, rinse it in vinegar and then in water to remove mucus, then cook again with herbs, salt and pepper. Snail meat is put in risotto, green salads, served with pasta, julienne is made from it.
Restaurants often serve baked snails in shells. First, prepare a mass of chopped shallots, garlic, softened butter, lemon juice, salt and chopped parsley. The washed and dried clams are covered with an oil mixture and placed in the refrigerator for 20 minutes, and then baked. In very expensive restaurants, they prepare an even more complex dish of snail meat - tender pieces are baked in puff pastry baskets with a sauce of heavy cream, spinach and parmesan.
How snails are served
Most often, difficulties arise with the supply and use of snails in shells. For them, there is a special serving dish with small indentations, allowing them to be placed with the hole up so that the juice does not flow out. Since the French name for edible snails is escargot, such a dish, as well as ceramic or cast-iron dishes for baking them, bears the beautiful name of escargot or escargotniere. There is an escargotniere only for an even number of shellfish - 6, 12 or 24.
According to etiquette, snails are served with special tongs and a small thin fork with a long handle with two prongs. Since the snails are slippery and hot, they are held with special tongs (also called escargot tweezers) while the meat is pulled out with a fork. Then the slice is dipped in the sauce and eaten with a slice of baguette, washed down with white wine. If you don't have tongs on hand, etiquette allows you to take the snail in your hand, wrap it with a napkin, and remove the meat. If snails are served without shell, their meat is eaten just like any other - with a table knife and fork.
Which snails are suitable for food
Although there are about 100 varieties of edible snails in the world, finding one in your garden will not be easy if you do not live somewhere in France or the Mediterranean region. This is where most of these edible molluscs prefer to live. One of the very first snails, which was eaten by the ancient Greeks and Romans, is called Burgundy or, in memory of its glorious past, Roman. It reaches 10 centimeters in length and has a round, cream or light brown body. These snails are so popular that they are bred throughout Europe, as well as in the United States and some Asian countries. In the wild, they are almost destroyed, so they are protected in most European countries.
The gastronomic rival of the Roman snail is the Turkish snail. The annual import of these molluscs reaches 600 tons. These snails can be found in the south of Russia. They reach 2 centimeters in height and are distinguished by a brown carapace with cream longitudinal stripes.
But, even if you are lucky enough to find an edible snail in your garden, you cannot eat it right away. Snails collected from the wild should be fed with cornmeal for two weeks, waiting until all harmful substances are released from them.
