Autumn is a good and easy time to gather snails to eat straight away. The French do this traditionally. The snails have grown and fattened up throughout the summer, and are now hibernating. This means they have purged themselves and are dormant, but have not yet lost much weight. All you have to do is find them, and kill them in boiling water soon after gathering. Don’t keep them in a warm damp place first or they might wake up again.
If you’re ready for a snail meal, you can freeze or bottle them after boiling in stock. See the March 09 archive for details of preparation and recipes.
Another TV film crew! This time it’s for S4C, the Welsh channel, and particularly for teenagers. Since I can't speak Welsh I was not allowed to contribute any pearls of wisdom or scraps of knowledge directly to the show. I dread to think what the angle is, but I heard a lot of laughter.
Now I think: What a ridiculous thing to be famous for, eating snails. I can't really understand what’s so strange and fascinating about it. There are far more interesting things in my life.
The garden snail, Helix aspersa, came to Britain with the Romans, who loved to eat them, they may have come earlier, in the Bronze age, but didn’t spread much. It’s the snail most cultivated for gourmet food and is known as petit gris. This site follows up a piece on the One Show (BBC1) in April 2009. It has information on how to prepare garden snails, for cooking and eating, of recipes, all in the March Archive, more on Purging in May Archive. To see my comments with slide show, click on it.
awesome!
ReplyDeletethanks a lot for your snail blog! I am really enjoyed with your blog. I am collector of snail shells,sea shells,beach shells,landshells if you are exchange with me its would possible for exchange with me. I am from kathmandu,Nepal.
ReplyDeletehere are my detail
laxmi prasad shahi
house no.163,lakhgall
ward no.19,damai tole
kathmandu,Nepal.
note: just send empty envelope don't enclosed shells if you want enclosed before inform me OK. if you sent me without my information I am not take responsible for your enclosed items. thanks
JASON SMITH
ReplyDeleteSurely builders lime would kill them.
You're thinking of quicklime, which burns. builders lime is ground up chalk, and fine.