Cooking Garden Snails

I just had to share this dish cooking garden snails. I can’t take the credit for this, as this bit of inspiration came from John Fernley using a recipe he got from a friend in Crete. So let’s hear John describe the dish:

Hi Nick. Well it’s garden cooking season again. Here’s the latest feast cooked in the tandoor. 
I prepared some garden snails harvested after rain. Starved on a bucket for a few weeks, cleaned and boiled for ten minutes. Then the exciting bit. A pan on the tandoor grill. A little salt added and the snails go in open end down. Then a good glug of olive oil. The snails are sautéed for a few minutes then some rosemary and thin slices of garlic are added. Finally a generous splash of my home made blackberry balsamic vinegar. The snails are served with some good bread – also made in the garden. Fabulous! 

Trouble is I’m the only one who will eat them! Amid cries of “Yuck!” and “how could you?!” I had to eat them all myself. I hope you’re ok and enjoying your tandoor too. 

Now I got the same sort of reaction from my wife and daughter, so maybe its a bloke thing. The first thing my wife said was “How do you know they haven’t eaten any slug pellets?”. Fair comment, but my first thought was don’t use poison, put beer traps down. Got to improve the flavour of the snails as well. This is what John had to say on the subject:

You have to be very careful with snails as you don’t know what they’ve been eating. I give them lovage and sage to eat for a few days. Then they are starved for a week.  Then they can be washed and boiled. It’s the best form of garden pest control! 

Well John looks pretty satisfied with the results and who can blame him.