Snails slither back in fashion

Going nowhere slowly

The problem with snails for the serious foodie is not that they are weird, but rather that they are passé. Anna Trapido suggests that they might be making a return to a restaurant menus.

 

For many years, snails were synonymous with the kind of outmoded, artery-clogging, Francophone food that was banished to the culinary cold. But fashion is deliciously fickle and escargot enthusiasts will be glad to hear that a retro-chic revival is finally underway. Suddenly snails are everywhere. Whether you favour your gastropods deliciously tossed in lemon grass at Auberge Michel in Sandton or served on sandwiches at The Mount restaurant in Durbanville, escargots are in the edible ascendancy.

Only the snails are not surprised by their new found plat du jour, hip-and-happening status. They have seen it all before. Over the centuries these univalve molluscs have repeatedly slithered in and out of foodie favour. Early enthusiasm was clearly considerable. The piles of snail shells found at palaeo-anthropological sites across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas suggest that they may have been amongst the first flesh consumed by ancient humans. Perhaps that is because they were so easy to catch.

ANCIENT FOODSTUFF

By the First Century AD, it was no longer a case of hunting and gathering, but rather farming and breeding. Pliny the Elder described snail-filled vivarium where lucky beasts were fattened on wine-soaked oats and selectively bred for taste, colour, texture and fecundity. Cato the Elder advised that snails should be kept and bred in a paddock with a water-filled trench around it as this saved on the expense of keeping a slave to catch escapers.

In the post-Roman era, agricultural interest waned, but wild gathering and consumption continued, because the Catholic Church did not classify snails as meat, thus making them a permitted protein source even on days designated for meat abstinence.

The first known reference to French snail preparation is to be found in the 14th century tome Le Managier de Paris. This wonderful guidebook for new wives offers sexual tips, gardening hints and a plethora of recipes including the advice that "snails should be caught in the morning. Take the young snails, those with black shells, from the vines or elder trees then wash them in so much water that they throw up no more scum, then wash them once in salt and vinegar and set them to stew in water...".

Perhaps the medieval housewives cooked them wrong because by 1530 the snail was spurned by the French elite to such an extent that Estienne Laigue's bizarrely, titled book A Noteworthy Treatise Concerning the Properties of Turtles, Snails, Frogs and Artichokes dismissed them with the damning opinion that "snails are ugly. I know the ancients ate them, but I can not accept people's eating them daily since other foods are more nourishing and of better substance."

SLITHERING INTO FASHION

In the 1870s the snail was rescued from garden pest status by refugees from Alsace-Lorraine who established Parisian brasseries specialising in the food and drink of their home region. For the people of Alsace snails have long filled the gustatory gap that oysters occupied at the coast and so it was that escargot à l' Alsacienne and Alsace-style snail soup made their mark on the mouths of the metropolis.

Escoffier pushed them into poshville with his "snails as a greedy man likes them" recipe in which cooked escargot are stuffed back into their shells with aspic, butter, parsley and garlic, baked for 10 minutes and served with a cap of breadcrumbs fried in butter. And damn fine it is too.

But what creeps up must come down and in recent years concern for arterial health has seen snails relegated to the kind of restaurants with Shania Twain on the sound system and chicken Kiev on the menu. Fortunately there is only so much healthy living that a food culture can take and thus it is that the snail slathered in butter and garlic is staging a comeback.

The most popular of the 116 varieties of edible land dwelling snail within the Francophone culinary context are the Petit Gris (helix aspersa) and the escargot de Bourgogne (helix pomatia). Modern snail farms pack as many as a whopping one million snails into 200 meters square, but escargot aficionados will tell you that wild is the way to go. Both beasts make their homes on grape vines, fatten themselves all summer, when the French refer to them as the courerur (runner), and then make the fatal mistake of hibernating underground when they become known as the dormeur (sleeper). It is then that Gallic snail hunters strike. Effective, but not very sporting.

MODERN TRENDS

Once caught, there are a multitude of snail preparation methods. The classic garlic and shallot-infused butter baked snail in the shell recipe originates in Burgundy but Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking reveals that there are a plethora of other regionally specific dishes. In Languedoc, snails are grilled over charcoal and combined with ham, anchovies and nuts or served with aioli garlic mayonnaise. In Provence, they are drizzled with la limassade vinaigrette sauce.

In Portugal, they are referred to as caracois and stewed with white wine and couriço sausage. The Spanish produce a rice, snail and rabbit mélange known as arroz con conejo y caracoles while Greek's prepare a somewhat alarming sounding dish known as Kohli bourbouristi (popping snails with rosemary) - apparently "boubouristi" is the popping noise that snails make when you toss them in olive oil over a high heat. Heston Blumenthal's übermodern, deconstructed snail porridge (which is actually a parma ham-laden, oat-based, risotto-like dish with a knob of garlic parsley butter stirred through it for its vibrant green colour) has taken the British mollusc world by storm.

Of course, Europeans are not the only people to eat snails. In Laos and North Thailand, Apple Snails (pomacea canaliculata) are gathered in rice paddies, boiled and served with a dipping sauce of pounded garlic, chillies, fish sauce and coriander. In West Africa, Edikaikong soup is made from a mélange of wild spinach, crayfish, giant Tiger Snails (achatina achatina), palm oil and fish stock.

Those wanting to cook classic Burgundian butter and garlic-laden escargot should be wary of the Ghanaian Tiger Snail and the Thai Apple Snail which is delicious if prepared in classic Asian and West African dishes, but unsuited in taste and texture for French cuisine. Unscrupulous tinned snail purveyors have been known to chop up the aforementioned beasts and misrepresent them as Petit Gris.

The good news for South African snail fans is that the Petit Gris occurs in Cape vineyards so it is possible to avoid canned forms in favour of fresh ingredients.

Those who complain that snails are merely a chewy vehicle for butter and garlic should make their way to Elezane Industries in Hermanus where succulent, curiously nutty and intriguingly green-tasting fresh snails are available. A kilogram of fresh, live snails will set you back R44. Frozen meat also is available for those who don't fancy a bucket full of active escargot in their car boot.

But before you rush off to up the East Coast in search of gourmet gastropods, do be warned, with every mouthful of snail flesh you are inviting the return of other potentially retro-chic food forms. If you suddenly see cherries jubilee, sole Veronique, flambéed baked Alaska and the Gueridon trolley rolling back into fashion you will have no one to blame but yourself.

WHERE TO EAT SNAILS:
• House Ivorian, Yeoville, Johannesburg, Tel 011 487 0885, sometimes serves a regionally specific surf-and-turf type dish of crab and giant snail stew. The availability of the dish is dependent on access to Tiger Snails.

• Brasserie de Paris, Waterkloof, Pretoria, Tel 012 460 3583, serve achingly elegant snails with parsley purée.

• Auberge Michel, Sandton, Johannesburg, Tel 011 883 7013, offer snails in lemon grass wrapped in a Chinese pancake and served with glazed frogs' legs.

• Fat Olive Country Restaurant, Muldersdrift, Tel 011 659 0443, sell deliciously old-style butter-and-blue-cheese-baked snails.

• The Mount restaurant, Durbanville, Tel 021 975 0103, offer snail sandwiches topped with bacon and blue cheese

• Le Troquet in Westville, Durban, Tel 031 266 5388, serve escargot Forestiere (mushrooms and garlic butter).

• Elezane Industries, Tel 028 312 4908/ 082 404 3574, Shop 7 New Harbour, Hermanus sell fresh and frozen snails.

WINE WITH SNAILS
Snails can be incorporated in a multitude of dishes, but a classic preparation involves some variation on garlic butter. This is typical to both Alsace and Burgundy and not surprisingly the wines of these two French regions match well: try Pinot Gris and Riesling in the former case and Chardonnay and Pinot Noir in the latter.