Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Day 17: Escargot_ing going gone
Weight: 194.4
Today I got to reap the rewards of my ten day tending of garden snails. They are, to remind you, the striped kind, probably descended from snail brought over by Spanish missionaries, not the brown kind found in Southern California.
I had more than two dozen. I soaked them for a few hours in salt water, with vinegar, to de-slime. Then I rinsed, deshelled them (which took far too long) and fried them up. There was quite a bit of meat. I had very little today (assorted tree fruit) because I was so looking forward to this protein boost.
They were pretty darn good, because of the various seasonings I used. I ate quite a bit tonight. Perhaps it would have been good to eat fewer snails with some pad thai or something, but it was pretty good overall. The snails were weaker in flavor than oysters, so the strange musky flavor that I didn't expect would probably have been less weird had I grown up with this flavor. Moreover, the escargot I've had in the past was probably farm raised and thus a bit blander. In other words, I was expecting less gaminess, but in perspective, snails are easier on the palate for the less adventurous than some traditional species of shellfish.
So I feel well fed but not as impressed as I expected by the meat. I didn't follow the perfect recipe by simmering them for several hours in white wine, but they worked pretty well for this experiment. In any case, a great nutritional boost.
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