Are you my dinner?
And yet, once I had mastered the art of delicately hoisting them out of the shell with the fork and bringing them up level with my mouth all whilst keeping my eyes firmly squeezed tight (you just don’t want to see their little antennae’s when putting it in your mouth) I actually quite like the things!
I think my liking of snails has more to do with the lovely, rich garlic and parsley butter sauce but even so. These are not words you would expect to hear from me as I’m quite fussy when it comes to food.
I’ve now been eating snails for 11 years and love tucking into them at Christmas and on other special occasions. My Belle-Mere buys them by the dozen for me, knowing that I’ll eat a few dozen on my own if left to my own devices. I still can’t quite believe it myself you know, me eat snails? Nah you must be joking I’d have thought.
Have you experienced anything similar where you thought you’d hate a food but actually loved it?
Octopus – I only had it once, in a sauce made from its own ink. I was a guest at someone’s house and they’d made this, and I was wondering how I could gracefully decline. Obviously, there was no way out, so I took a deep breath and tucked in. And it was delicious – if you don’t think too much about what octopuses look like when they’re alive (and I’d watched them being caught, so that was difficult), and just concentrate on the taste, no problems.
Similarly with alpaca – the meat was delicious; just don’t think too hard about the poor dopey alpacas you saw earlier that day.
Snails, though. I’m just not sure I could. You can’t forget about what you’re eating, because you have to take them out of their shells. It’s right there in front of you to remind you. There are better delivery systems for garlic butter – I’m thinking bread. Or pretty much anything other than snails. But everyone I know who’s eaten them likes them, so I’m quite willing to accept this is entirely my failing!
Octupus! Brave you for trying gracefully and good on you for liking it! Just goes to show that everything is always worth trying. I normally engage in a heavy debate and then pretend to choke or something… I just cannot eat it. I have never tried them in their ink though maybe it’s nicer?
Alpaca, have never tried this either. Am surprised my Belle-Mere has not had me try this.
Yes, I like garlic bread too. I must have been a vampire hunter or something in a former life as I LOVE garlic
I’m a convert to snails and have been eating them happily for years – we always have some ready in the deep freeze.
My wife being French of course eats loads of disgusting things. We follow her but my kids and I draw the line at brains.
I wrote about it on my blog here:
http://wwwtheothersideofparis.blogspot.com/2007/08/thought-for-food.html
Urggghhhhh, it sounds as if your wife and my Hubby have food things in common. Thank goodness it’s me that does the cooking around here though!
Thanks for posting the link – you have saved me from ever having to try brains
I thoroughly enjoyed reading your brain encounter and suggest anyone else wondering about trying brains has a read!
Would you enjoy garlic butter with crusty bread but without snails?
Could you enjoy snails with crusty bread but without the garlic butter?
If you answer Yes to the first question, and No to the second, then what is the point of eating them? Just an excuse to eat the garlic butter?
Oh Merewoman, you’ve caught me out! Guilty as charged! It is the garlic butter that I love and as I’m such a Piggy I will eat anything that has it – maybe even Dumdad’s brains? (not literally though, see his post).
I do enjoy the snails as well, but maybe not as much if they weren’t in garlic butter?
And of course, I must never, ever see their antennae’s…
I love snails too and haven’t had them for years. I have often reminded my daughter (who is now 28) that she used to love them when she was around 18 months old. We used to regularly take her and my son (who as a little older) to a favourite restaurant early evening, and my daughter would have two portions of snails instead of a main meal. The waiters found it very amusing.
When I mention it these days, my daughter recoils in horror and vows she could never face them now.
Funny how tastes change
Do the Turks eat snails as well then Ayak? I always thought it was just a French thing but have recently discovered the Portuguese eat them too so maybe it’s just the Anglophones that don’t?
It must have been cute to see two toddlers gobbling up portions of snails in a restaurant!
I have never tried snails and I ‘m not fond of them but one of my paternal uncles does eat them regularly. Octopus, kalamari,yes. Brains(pork or veal),yes, of coures, it is a wonderful dish when it is prepared like smashed potatoes by someone who knows what he’s doing . It can be a delicacy if properly cooked. Also chicken liver when sauted in butter and whine….:))
So Romania is another snail eating country then!
Chicken liver okay. Brains, not tried – refer to my comments to Dumdad (read his post too, very funny). Octopus and kalamari I really don’t like the texture. Good on you though for eating all of this.
What types of food do you eat in Romania that some foreigners may consider strange? I love hearing about food traditions and cultures
No, Romanians do not eat snails. My familly does because, from my father’s side ,we are of French ancestry. As for a typical Romanian dish a westerner probably wouldn’t eat, i would chose 2:
1) DROB- a mixture of lamb intern organs ,finely chopped, mixed with eggs,fried onions,sour cream and baked in the oven until it gets a thick crust
2)LAMB HEAD SOUP- a soup made from the poor head of the lamb, with various herbs and lemon and som spices …
Both dishes are delicious and they are traditional Easter dishes for the Orthodox Romanians. Although Roman Catholic myself, I cook them ( only number 1, I cannot stand the image of the lamb head staring at me from the soup, nor can I touch and boil the poor thing …). Anyway, lots of people Romanian people discard these 2 dishes as well, for various reasons ,like the smell of the lamb ,which is not to everybody’s taste, the head idea which some find disgusting and so on. The main point is they are surprisngly good in an unexpected and archaic way. I cook the Drob every Easter because I associate it with the joy of the moment. It wouldn’t be Easter without it . I eat the lamb head soup when I am invited over someone’s house.
Ah,yes, a number 3 dish westerners might consider unedible is the TRIPE SOUP, which I strongly detest; it is made of beef tripe( intestines). I hate it and I would never eat it. But most of the Romanians just loooove it. I don’t think it is a purely Romanian dish, because the Turks also have it,under the same name. Probably we have borrowed it from the Turkish Empire time.
Rosabell, I have to be truthful, I don’t think I could stomach any of those!!
I think that, like you, if I had to cook any of those DROB would be the easiest… I don’t think I could bare looking at a lambs head staring up at me either!
I’ll happily eat snails but don’t often because of the garlic butter which tastes lovely but is lethal to the waistline. I don’t think I’ve tried them cooked any other way.
I draw the line at frog’s legs. My ex cooked them for me once and I nearly retched at the smell. The taste was no better. He probably wasn’t the best person to convert me, but he was passionate. Didn’t work though.
I always thought I’d dislike tete de veau, but had some the other day and it was delicious. Not sure I want to delve into what it was I was eating too closely though. No spoilers please either…!
Oops! Hadn’t thought about the waistline!
I don’t like frog’s legs either. Not so much the smell but the mini graveyard left on your plate afterwards. Also, way too fiddly to eat for my liking.
Now tete de veau is something that I am yet to try (or to avoid trying?). Then again, I may have already tried it. If often only find out second time round as my Belle-Mere never tells me what I’m eating anymore otherwise she know’s I probably wouldn’t try!
God, I love snails!
I want to love ris de veau and rognon de veau. I’ve tried, I swear but I just can’t manage the textures.
Hi Dedene, welcome to the snail loving club! Have you eaten them any other way than with the garlic butter?
It sounds as if you shouldn’t go to a local Lyonnais Bouchon as most of the cuisine here uses offal and god knows what. The only thing I can eat in a traditional restaurant here is salade lyonnaise and Quenelles…
I have had snails and while I would not actively seek them out to eat I think they aren’t as bad as people beleive. Of course though it is all in the way they are prepared, but that is the way it with lost of food right?
here here! I definitely agree with you on that Kelleyn! Food preparation is so important and can change how we enjoy the food in question… similar to seasoning I suppose.
I am definitely curious to find other preparations for snails to see if I enjoy them without the garlic butter.
Hi this is my first time here and I love the way you write, so conversational. I’m following you now
(does that sound too stalkerish?)
I love trying new foods so can’t really say that I thought I wouldn’t like something and then did.
Disclaimer: I am a vegetarian, so probably shouldn’t comment on the snail discussion.
I’m a new blogger, so please do stop by and give me some tips at: http://www.morethanjustmummy.blogspot.com
Hi Nmaha! thanks for stopping by. I love to see new people here, the blogworld is great isn’t it?
I wil forgive you for not commenting on the snails, as a vegetarian I should imagine even the thought of them is disgusting!
I love your blog and am following you too now so we are mutually stalking each other LOL
[...] On a sort of foodie bent this week, one of the posts that stood out for me was Piglet in France’s ode to that breakfast of champions… the [...]
What fun, this post and all the great comments. Cool!
I have yet to eat snails. I’d try them, for sure, if I had a chance. I lived in China, and the one thing that I am ashamed to say I have eaten and actually did like was dog. Dog as a stew in winter. It’s really quite tasty.
I’ve tried it all: sushi/sashimi so raw the fish was still moving, snake, turtle, frog, testicles (sheep — my home state of Colorado is famous for “Rocky Mountain Oysters” — steer testicles, although I have not had those), ostrich… All kinds of stuff around the globe and the weirder the better.
The saddest part for me with food intolerances/allergies is that I can no longer be an adventurous eater. I was proud of being so, and jumped at the opportunities to try new things. I am sad that now I have to know what ingredients are in each food, and have to avoid ones that make me sick. It’s put a crimp in my style, for sure.
It is quite fun isn’t it? All these foods! If I was going to start a definitive guide to foods that make people squirm this would be a good starting point!
I’ve had dog as well although I did not know that it was dog when I was eating it! It was part of a tasting menu in Cambodia (when I had the red ants) and we had a jungle stew and no-one at the restaurant would tell us what was in it. They conveniently couldn’t remember the word in English. It was only someone nearby that hunted said that there was no way it was boar or anything else, had to be dog. They confronted the waiter and he admitted to it being dog. It was quite tasty but not something I will be trying again! Nor red ants for that matter!
I will make a note to avoid Rocky Mountain Oysters at all costs
I hate it when names are misleading. I once ordered sweetbreads on an English menu thinking they were like pain d’epice or something… yes, I am very naive!
I cannot imagine what living with food tolerances must be like, I really feel for you. Have you experimented with all the exotic fruit and veg you can find in China town and the African shops? Maybe they can spice up your cuisine a bit? Also, check out Pig in the Kitchen’s site below – I just had a look and it looks like it could be really useful for you!
If you find the antennae of snails off-putting, then I can recommend a restaurant in Rhodes that you might want to avoid. There they advertised “escargots” – it was in our pre-vegetarian days, so tired after 3 weeks of typically Greek food, and seeking a change, we order them. They were served in a soup bowl filled with a kind of greyish-brown gloop, and were floating on the surface like a small armada – and every one of them had their antennae sticking up, as if searching the skies. Never again.
Couldn’t eat frogs’ legs, knowing how they are prepared. Mostly in Asia, where the live frogs are chopped in half, the legs going one way and the still-living bodies chucked aside.
Same with octopus, although we occasionally eat fish. Having watched several programmes about these gentle and intelligent creatures, and then seen them being beaten to death on rocks, never, never, never again.
urgghhh! Those snails sound absolutely gross! It sounds like they were floating around in dishwater mixed with dirt and that they hadn’t been purged. I do love Greek food although I can imagine that it would get a bit sameish after 3 weeks!
That’s totally disgusting for the frogs legs and octopus, I do not eat either and after reading this don’t think I could. I often wonder about becoming a vegetarian and I hate to admit whilst I don’t particularly like meat I do enjoy it from time to time. I do try and buy free range though and have a great butchers.
I ate a lot of snails when I was living in France. Here in Italy they do them as a stew with mint amongst other mysterious ingredients… I have yet to try them, but my landlady aka the mayoress has issued an open invitation for when she next has a cook-up! So far I have loved all the foods other people seem to yuk at; oysters, pulpo gallego (octopus how they most often prepare it in Spain yum yum!) snails etc. However I cannot bear tripe (callos madrileños yuk yuk), or watery broth or a sort of Hungarian salad floating in sugar/vinegar water that my ex used to make. Just thinking about those things makes me heave a little.
You are a brave lass! But then I gathered that reading your adventures on your blog
Let me know once you have tasted the Italian way and maybe you can get the recipe out of the Mayoress? I’m looking for other ways to cook snails and mint sounds interesting – a true test as to whether it is actually the snails I’m liking or just the garlic butter!
Hi there and thanks for stopping by over at mine. I love your blog, and yes, I did have that snail experience, too. Admittedly, I still shudder at the first sight of a plateau de mer with its glibbery oysters and its coquillages crus, but once the petit chablis is opened, the jiggly, fishy friends go down rather well.
Thank’s Metropolitan Mum! It’s amazing what some Petit Chablis can do isn’t it? BTW – my fave wine!
Goat’s Lung! I was tricked into eating it (had to accept for cultural reasons!) and hated it. Would never eat it again. I know isn’t really an example of what you wanted to know, but thought I’d throw it in for good measure.
Found you via Metropolitan Mum and was struck by your blog name (vague similarity to mine) and the fact that we are both in France (not that it’s a big country or anything).
So thought I’d pop by and say hello!
Pig x
No way! Another Piggy! So I had a look on your blog and it looks great, just my type of blog
I gathered that you are in Paris right?
Thank’s for sharing the food horror, this is exactly what I’m looking for! So did you eat this in France or somewhere else? I’m intrigued
I can’t think of anything more disgusting… or barely! I once went to a cookery lesson to learn how to make Terrine and had to use intestines to line the dish. I nearly threw up then and there and found someone else to do it for me. I have never eaten terrine again since…
Thanks for stopping by Pig, look forward to reading more at your place.
I always thought I could never eat snails…we used to catch them and give them to Rolande or to Didier. Then one day Rolande came round with a dozen to try..goodness, isn’t British politeness something…I tried.
The snail I can live without, but the sauce is something else!
Helene does them out of the shell with the butter served on a scallop shell, which is a lot lighter from the sauce angle…in either case, they’re a lunch thing as I think I’d die if I ate that sauce at night.
As to offal, brought up on a farm we ate the lot…and enjoyed it. Haggis, faggots, you name it, it used everything!
Madeleine told me about the disgraceful way frogs’ legs were prepared..so I only ate them once, from politeness..and then again, it was the sauce which was the attraction.
Oh. mention of ris de veau and rognons de veau…mouth watering, will have to go and cook something. Something offaly nice.
Hi Fly. I hope you enjoyed your dinner?
Reading Sarah’s comments about the waistline makes me think I should be avoiding snails for quite some time (unless I try them without the sauce?) and your comment just confirms the point! As I get older I am finding it harder to each rich foods before going to bed. Meat is hard to digest too!
I’m not keen on offal, although I have been caught out as saying I like something only to find out it was offal. My Belle-Mere does this to me often as she knows I will not eat things if I know first.
It must have been entertaining growing up on a farm
The first time I tried snails was at the Santa Barbara French Festival & I thought they were wildly exotic…Ok, I had to pinch my nose as well, & the little guys were practically swimming in pesto so I think any “snailish” flavor was sufficiently drowned out, but I have to admit I liked them too!
Now preparing them, that’s another question! I think I’ll leave that to the professionals…or at least the folks that run our local bistro… The only other thing that I’m surprised I genuinely like in France is… stinky cheese..the bluer the better!
Hi Tuula, thanks for stopping by and commenting. I’m glad you did as now I have discovered your blog too
Stinky blue cheese hey? I’m good with stinky cheese (although I once tried one called Tue L’Amour which literally means kill love, it was that stinky) but I’m not so good with blue cheese. I have been known for scraping the mould of the crust on cheeses in fancy restaurants – a total embarrassment to my French family!
Love escargots…at least the ones that D’s mother prepares at Christmas.
But there were other snail-like weird things that la mamie has made — we had them during Christmas too — and for the life of me, I can’t remember what they’re called. There’s no garlic butter and I vaguely remember them being served cold or at room temperature. They were also difficult to pull out of their shell too and it left me wondering how ‘dead’ the little suckers were. I think they were good but I think I was focused more on swallowing the little suckers than how they tasted!
Hey Tanya, I hope you’re enjoying Toronto?
Yay! Another snail fan! Have you tried them in the vol-au-vents casing? You can quite taste the snail in them but sometimes they can be a bit dry.
I’m curious about the things the Mamie makes, I don’t suppose you know what they’re called? It doesn’t sound very normal that they won’t come out of their shells easily though!
Funny thing… j’ai adoré snails UNTIL I had them in Paris… and they were so different than the ones I had eaten in the US for years… I have not been able to eat them since… le sigh… it is a shame… maybe I should give them a try again… hmmmm
Hi Fifi, thanks for stopping by. Somehow I would never have imagined that you’d be able to get snails in the US, I don’t know why but I just didn’t think you’d get them!
You must re-try them again – get someone to taste them for you first to check they’re nice!
Eel- I tried it in a sushi roll and it was quite Delicious
snails in sushi roll? now that’s a new one for me to try!
I am ashamed to say that I just can’t….I think it’s the Aussie in me….I have grown up thinking of snails as a pest and a destructor of gardens… not a delicacy! xv
I was pretty much the same until I tried them!
Oooh no I couldnt eat them I just pick em up and drop them over the wall! LOL I didnt think that I would like pickled garlic but it is divine!
I’ve never tried pickled garlic, maybe I should add it to my list of things to try!
Snaiils aare well nice, like mussels but more chewy and taste differrent