Eating Snails in Spain

When we moved to our new house I was really excited. The terrace has a flower bed on each side, beautiful soil and covered in weeds. Perfect! Just enough for me to do a spot of gardening without being overwhelmed. The beds are edged with volcanic stones which are quite beautiful and also the perfect place to house snails. There were billions of them.

A few years ago in Wales, I had tried to start a snail 'farm' but had only ever found one or 2 snails (if you could eat slugs I would have been rich). So, this time with snails coming out of my ears, I thought I'd give it another go.

I checked with my spanish teacher, she assured me they were the eating type (she got quite excited about me collected them.) She told me to put them in a net and starve them for 2 weeks. I had to boil them for a minute and then cook them in the oven.

When some other friends came round, she told me that her grandmother used to put rosemary and thyme into the net. Which I dutifully did (although none of the snails ate any of it.)

Perhaps rather daringly I decided to serve them as a starter when some friends came to dinner. Thought I'd have a quick look on the internet to see what other people advised. Gordon Ramsey said to feed them a carrot and put them in the fridge. Oh pants, I didn't have time for the carrot, but I washed them and put them in the fridge. I think the washing them woke them up as they sort of hibernate when you hang them in a bag without any food. Now I had snails crawling round in a tub in my fridge.

Anyhow, I boiled them and cooked them in garlic butter. They were alright (not fantastic). Perhaps they were a little underdone. A bit sort of chewy. Our friends ate them politely.

I had so many that we tried again a few weeks later. I had thought we'd eat them with my mother who lives in France but she didn't seem very keen. I cooked them for longer this time and offered them to the children. Needless to say the kids didn't touch them. This time they were a bit over cooked. Rather like leather and tough.

Hmm, I think I'll leave cooking snails to the experts. And I'm afraid it's slug pellets for the garden in an attempt to save the basil.