Pasta Recipes: French Cooking? Italian Cooking? Pasta Con Le Escargot!

In French cooking the varieties of eaten snails are first purged(Purging the escargot is a matter of starving them for a time to create hunger in them and then feeding the escargot something healthy like cereal or cornmeal. This process helps the escargot to clean and purge the undesirable elements from their digestive tracts to make them suitable for consumption.) then killed and removed from the shell and cooked in garlic and butter in French cooking or in red wine or beer/ale in other cultures such as the Maltese or Sicilian cultures and then are put back into their shells for presentation purposes and then the sauce poured over the snails for serving. The eater of the snails is then provided with a special set of snail tongs to hold the shell and a snail fork to remove the escargot from the shell to be eaten. Your average serving of escargot is between 6 and 12 escargot.

There is more to snails then just French cooking or even Italian cooking as there arm many varieties of snails from around the world being eaten in different ways. Whether in Italian cooking or French cooking snails are considered a gourmet food. In countries like Africa the giant land snails are produced for food commercially. There are sea snails, land snails and fresh water snails that are harvested for food in places like the Phillipines, Spain, Algeria, Morocco, Sicily, Portugal, Greece, Vietnam, Loas, Cambodia, even China and parts of India. It’s just amazing! The recipe can be found below. Enjoy!

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Ingredients
12 -16 ounces linguine or fettucine
5 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 to 1 Cup of chicken stock
½ to 1 medium red onion finely chopped
1/2 lb any kind of mushroom, cleaned and stalks trimmed*
6 anchovy fillets, straight from the tin, not rinsed, chopped
2 to 3 tablespoon garlic, finely chopped ( or more, to taste)
2 tablespoons lemon juice ( freshly squeezed, or use lime juice which is even better)
2-4 Tbsp. Thick sour cream.
14 ounces snails ( usually 2 x 200g tins for me, i.e. 400 g)
3 tablespoons basil, finely chopped or 1 Tbsp. Dried basil will work to.
1/2 cup walnuts toasted in a pan, chopped
4 tablespoons gorgonzola cheese
some sliced format pecorino or romano cheese
1 tablespoon black or white pepper, coarse ( or more)
1/2 teaspoon salt ( to taste)
1 Tsp. Crushed oregano
2 Tbsp. Rinsed capers or kalamata olives rough chop or whole.

Directions
1. Put a fairly deep serving dish in a warming oven to heat.
2. Fill a large pot with water, add salt, and put on to boil for the pasta.
3. Heat the oil and fry the onions until just soft.
4. Slice the mushrooms and add. (You can use any type of mushrooms available to you).

5. Keep the heat quite high and let the mushrooms cook through.

Note: Mushrooms absorb liquid and oil so use the chicken stock to keep some juices in the pan to continue cooking the sauce or the mushrooms will absorb everything in the pan.

6. Take 6 anchovies out of flat and chop.

7. Don’t worry about the fishy or salty flavor of the anchovies you won’t notice it in the end result of this dish.

8. Add the chopped anchovies to the onion and mushrooms, add garlic, and stir through.

9. Add your lemon juice to the onion, mushrooms and garlic.
10. Reduce heat of your stove to low, and add the sour cream into the mixutre stir in well.

11. Add the drained snails and stir through until everything is hot and the sauce comes to a bare simmer and thickens.

12. Remove from heat and carefully fork in the parsley, walnuts, Parmesan and pepper.
13. Add salt, stir, and taste: it might need more salt. You might also want to add more lemon juice.

14. Cover with a lid, pull aside, and now cook the spaghetti until al dente — usually no more than 8 – 11 minutes.

15. Drain the spaghetti in a colander, then top back into its large pot. Add the snail sauce and fold in well and evenly.

16. Take out the warmed serving dish, and tip in the whole lot.
17. You could carve over more parmesan shavings, scatter with extra parsley, and sprinkle with finely chopped spring onions.