One of my friends is a countess, as I found out more than ten years after getting to know her. Her nobility, as it should be, is in her perfect manners and bearing rather than in her clothes or house. Like much of the old nobility, she's a bit of a cheapskate and doesn't like to splash out except when it's really necessary. Dior bags and Louboutin shoes? Très peu pour elle! But you can invite her anywhere and she will turn up dressed perfectly and impress your friends. She lives in a small apartment crowded with the furniture of relatives' châteaux, and serves coffee under a gilt eighteenth-century portrait of a handsome young man in a white wig and a blue silk suit.
The other day she was telling me how to raise snails. "The ones you can buy are big and expensive and tasteless," she said. "The little gray snails that you pick off the leaves are much tastier and much cheaper too. When I was a child I learned how to raise my own. We would go pick them off the vines and then bring them home. Then we kept them for a month before eating them."
"Why don't you eat them right away?" I asked.
"You have to clean them. The ones you buy are raised in cages, but the outdoors ones have been on the ground and pick up all kinds of saletés. So you leave them for a month and feed them and water them every day, on a board with a groove around it. At the beginning, their crottes are black. Once the crottes are white, you can eat them. And they're delicious!"
Good thing i did not read this post before ordering our snails in Vancouver BC on Thanksgiving day! EEck! Veronique (French Girl in Seattle)
Posted by: Veronique Savoye | 01 December 2011 at 05:39
I "raise" snails myself--they are big fans of my vegetable garden--but I probably shouldn't tell you what I do with them (it's nothing appetizing).
Posted by: chrissoup | 02 December 2011 at 06:04
Salt?
Posted by: Sedulia | 02 December 2011 at 17:49
Nope, a brisk stomp.
Posted by: chrissoup | 03 December 2011 at 22:03
And here I thought keeping snails for a while before you ate them was just my Spanish host mom being quirky! She seemed more concerned about the contents of their digestive tracts than what they had picked up outside, though, and she only kept them for a few days before killing them with salt.
Posted by: Girl With The Most Cake | 15 January 2012 at 08:58
And did you eat them? I haven't had the nerve yet.
Posted by: Sedulia | 15 January 2012 at 22:18