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‘Slippery little suckers!’
For many of us, our only acquaintance with edible snails — or escargot, if we want to be all Française and fancy about it — might have been the iconic scene in Pretty Woman when Vivian (Julia Roberts), faced with the unfamiliar dish, sends one flying across the room after handling it a little too violently with her tongs. Of course, Vivian’s charm and a waiter’s quick reflexes — he deftly fields the airborne slug in his palm, and reassures her, “It happens all the time” — save the day.
If you’re also (like us) just the teensiest bit squeamish about what you consent to having on your dinner plate, then trust the words of our sources (aka French food bloggers) that a snail supper is nothing to scoff at. Escargot, they say, has a similar flavour to porcini or portobello mushroom, buttery and herbaceous; the dark brown piece of meat, once removed from its shell, feels “slightly rubbery in the mouth and goes down quickly” — the last of which seems a bit ironic considering this is a snail we’re talking about. Its fans note that escargot is a high-protein, low-fat dish best enjoyed with wine plus lots of crusty bread (to mop up any residual garlic-parsley butter…and snail juice).
The version of the dish that is most commonly served at haute cuisine establishments is Escargots à la Bourguignonne — the name is a nod to the snails’ county of origin: the region of Bourgogne/Burgundy. (A very expensive variety of escargot known as “helix pomatia” is recommended for use in the classic Bourgogne recipe.) Snails are usually cleaned and sold separately from their shells; chefs purchase the shells separately to place the cooked escargot in while plating. On other occasions, the recipe may call for replacing the shells with puff pastry. Then there is Escargots à la Bordelaise, for which smaller snails from the Charente region are sought, then cooked with other meat, spices and wine. The sauce for this preparation is in the Bordeaux style.
If you want to try escargot — that is, without testing their aerodynamic attributes in a posh restaurant à la Vivian — there are etiquette guides demonstrating the correct technique of handling your snail fork (a slender, two-pronged utensil) and tongs (a slightly unwieldy implement that is meant to hold the shells firmly, while you draw the meat out with the fork). Some establishments provide specially indented plates for the escargot; at others, it may be considered perfectly good manners to clasp the shell in your napkin with one hand, and prod its inmate out into your dish with a fork. Wiki-How even helpfully begins its guide with “prepare yourself for the experience” so the gastronomically intrepid can, you know, prepare themselves for the experience.
If those instructions do make you wonder whether or not sampling snails is really worth the trouble, you might like to know that it was quite a favoured treat of royalty. Some accounts trace the escargot’s ascendance in France to the time of Caesar’s campaign in Gaul, although others say the dish was consumed long before Rome’s meddling. The most popular origin story by far (at least for the modern preparation) is that French diplomat Prince Talleyrand had the dish cooked for an esteemed visitor — Tsar Alexander — when he wished to impress the Russian monarch with a novel meal. A variation of this anecdote names a Burgundy chef, Antonin Carême, as inventing the dish when the tsar stopped by his restaurant circa 1814.
Royal patronage aside, there’s a simpler persuasion for getting over your hesitations about digging into escargot. For, as wiser beings (aka French chefs) than us have noted, if you can eat shellfish, then why not snails?