My cider recipe for cooking snails

Alcohol is an essential ingredient in cooking my locally grown edible snails and here is how to use the local cider. The flavour of home cooked snails will beat anything you've tasted on holiday.

Make your cooking stock with the following ingredients:
1oo ml cider
1 litre water
1 crushed clove garlic,
chopped shallot,
chopped carrot,
sea salt and black pepper
1 clove, 1 bay leaf, small sprinkling of cinnamon and nutmeg,chopped parsley and thyme (could be dried or fresh)1 whole bird’s eye chilli (don’t break it up or the stock could be too hot)
(One litre of stock would cook a kilo of snails.)

Make a 10% brine preferably with sea salt

Bring a large pan of water to rapid boil and add salt. Drop the sleeping snails into the boiling water and bring back to the boil for five minutes. Plunge them into cold water after blanching so that you can handle the shells to remove the snail using a fork. Twist the snail following the shape of the shell to remove it and rinse in cider vinegar to loosen the slime.

Drop the de-shelled snails into hot brine and boil for thirty minutes to remove slime.

Remove the snails from the brine and drop them into the hot stock. Bring back to the boil and simmer for about one and a half hours. I use a slow cooker for this part of the process so that I can be sure they will simmer and won’t boil dry.

At the end of the cooking process turn off the heat and leave cooked snails in the hot stock while you prepare the garlic butter.

For the garlic butter:
Per 250 gm pack unsalted English butter (taken out of the fridge well ahead of time) which should do 5 or 6 dozen snails, depending on how much you like garlic butter.
20gm chopped garlic
40 gm chopped shallot
Freshly picked parsley – enough to colour it green
Add cider to taste but try 70 ml

The herbs, garlic and shallot are most easily chopped in a food processor with the cider unless you are a skilled chef. Then mix well with the butter.Drain the snails well and reheat with the cider butter in a hot oven in an oven proof dish until the butter bubbles. Served with crusty bread and a side salad.

Reptile Food

In every clutch of snails there are some that never grow properly and can't be sold for human consumption so I sell them for reptile food. There are some lizards that like snails: skink, tegu and monitors. I believe some turtles eat them too.

I sell the snails in small quantities: 100 gm by weight and you can choose what size you want to suit your particular reptile pet. If you want larger quantities that can usually be arranged - just email and ask. www.snailfarm.org.uk

Of Molluscs and Me

Today I was copied in to a discussion between two conservationists concerned about the fate of Helix pomatia on the Kent Downs. The problem seems to be predation, possibly by the glow worm, though this is not definitely established. The numbers of Roman snails, as we call them, have fallen in a particular location - lots of empty shells have been found. Romans snails are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 and glow worms are also rare. So if one rare species is killing the other rare species this leaves conservationists with an interesting dilemma. Is it legal to protect the snails by destroying the glow worms? I look forward to hearing the answer as it is relevant to the struggle I have to protect my snails from the attention of shrews. Further information on Helix pomatia from http://roman-snail.co.uk