‘When you pull a snail out of its shell and pop it piping hot into your mouth,’ writes Waverley Root, ‘you are likely to consider it a simple dish, and to have no idea how much effort has gone into its preparation.’
I’ve eaten the snails that come in cans, with a separate bag of shells for serving them, in restaurants in Australia. And in a pension in Spain I was given a taste of the family’s supper that, if I correctly interpreted the hand actions, was made with snails collected on the rooftop after the rain of the previous evening. But no, I never stopped to wonder how snails got on to my plate.
One morning at Caromb, after a couple of days of rain, I see a big saucepan of small grey-brown snails in Madame’s laundry, and a couple of days later a pile of empty shells in the rubbish. Yes, she says, she collects the snails, as though surprised that the offer of a free meal would be ignored. Especially when it’s a luxury meal. I’ve seen snails in the Carpentras market priced at 27 francs per kilo, which makes them at least twice as expensive as chicken. If you know where and when to look, she adds, they’re easy to find; they love new young vine leaves. She has several secret sites on her land and promises to take me with her after the next rainy period.
I wait for the next rainy day, but no invitation comes, and the next one, and still Madame does not summon us, so John ventures into the vineyard by himself and collects about three dozen of the biggest. He shows them to Madame; are they the right ones? Madame and the bonhomme sort through them, rejecting those with soft shells. About half the harvest is thrown away. Now you have to purge them, she says, fast them.
In La Cuisine pour Tous, Ginette Mathiot says to fast snails for a week. Another source quoted by Elizabeth David refers to 30–40 days, though I interpret this as ironic exaggeration. The bonhomme says he doesn’t bother about the fasting, but then, nor does he bother with any of Madame’s refinements when he cooks them. Madame advises a cleansing diet of thyme rather than a total fast, so that they take on some of the flavour of the herb. We keep the snails downstairs in Madame’s laundry and give them five days of fresh thyme to clear themselves out.
Five days pass, and the snails don’t look any different. They haven’t eaten much of the thyme, either. What’s next, I ask Madame. First, you have to wash them, she replies, wash them in clean water three times, make sure the shells are clean. Then you drop them into boiling water for about five minutes, drain them, and when they’re cool you take them out of the shell and lift off the dark strip of intestine.
It seems a lot of work but I follow her directions to the letter. There doesn’t seem to be much left by the time I’ve removed the inedible bits but I persevere to the next stage, simmering the snails for hour or so with onion and carrot and herbs for flavour. In the meantime I make a garlic butter, as Madame suggests. The cooked snails go back into their shells, I top them with garlic butter and slide them into the oven. The scent of garlic fills the kitchen.
Happy enough to be involved with the gathering and the thyme treatment, John has distanced himself from all subsequent stages. If I were totally honest I’d have to say that I don’t blame him; I’ve had moments of disgust, and I’m not looking forward to the taste test. If I could gracefully bow out I would. Yet I cannot admit to Madame that I squibbed out. I have to face the challenge.
My cooked snails don’t make my mouth water when I put the dish on the table. They’re grey and shrivelled and totally unappetising. John is repulsed and can’t bring himself to taste one. He can’t even bear to watch as I eat them, one by one, almost all of them, about a dozen in total. They’re very small, no more than half a teaspoon in size, and surprisingly tender, unlike tinned ones I’ve eaten in Australia. I can’t taste any thyme; in fact, I can’t taste much of anything except the garlic butter. Perhaps they are an acquired taste, or perhaps it’s in the genes of the French to appreciate snails.
The snail experiment is not one to be repeated.