Bacon, Butter & Booze: Culinary Adventure: Escargot

Tonight, for the first time, I ate escargot¾a/k/a snails. Yup, the little slithery things that roam through your gardens when the dew is still fresh in the grass. The little things with the antennas that shrink up into their shells when you touch them. Gary, SpongeBob's pet. I consumed him.

I've always wanted to try snails, not because I'd heard anything about their wondrous qualities; as with most of my culinary adventures, my curiosity got the best of me. How could I miss out on something that other cultures have enjoyed for centuries?!? Life is too short to pass up something I might enjoy just because a few onlookers might raise their unadventurous eyebrows. So, when I saw escargot at Whole Foods tonight, I ordered a half dozen. If I liked them, it was a good enough portion that I wouldn't feel shortchanged, and if I hated them (fat chance), it wouldn't be too much of a waste. The openings of the snails' shells* were already filled with a garlic & herb butter; I'm pretty sure the herbs used were parsley and chervil.

* If you ever find yourself on Jeopardy and have to tell Alex (...or is it ask Alex? What is 'Go Ask Alex?'...) what the opening of a snail's shell is called, the correct anatomical term is "mantle."

I had no idea how to cook these things, and the guy at Whole Foods surprisingly wasn't much help (I'm going to assume that he was either new, or he was having a crappy day - Whole Foods employees are generally a knowledgeable, delightful bunch). So, I did it the modern way and googled it. According to several potentially credible sources, 10 minutes in a 400-degree oven is the way to achieve gastropod greatness.

Here's a helpful hint - if you're going to eat escargot, make sure you have a seafood fork. Seafood forks are smaller than regular forks, and the tines span about half an inch (1.3cm), making it easy for the eater to pierce meat that is lodged inside a shell. When me and my salad fork finally got a snail out of the shell, I bit into it, hoping it was worth the effort. Had I used a seafood fork, it would have been! A salad fork was a bit too laborious for my ever-so-impatient soul. The texture was similar to calamari or fried clams, but the flavor was not at all fishy - very earthy, in fact, almost like a wild mushroom.

Since I didn't cook these myself, I can't offer you a recipe in good conscience. What I can do, however, is offer you a photo journal. Here are the pics I snapped throughout tonight's escargot adventure.

P.S. Am I the only one who, upon hearing the word "escargot," immediately gets "Hypnotize" by Notorious B.I.G stuck in her head? "...escargot, my car go 160..." I digress...back to the food, kids.