H


andling snails, alive or dead, is fiddly and best left to the professionals. The mod- ern breed of professional foragers may know how to make them edible, but they are also aware that the task is uneconomic. It’s the professional snail farmers, who breed, feed and process them, who earn a living rearing the snails. They give them a herb and cereal diet – wild snails can ingest toxic plants – and purge them before killing them. They then wash off the abundant slime and blanch and remove the snails from their shells. It’s not a new branch of farming. The


Romans did it, cosseting the gastropods as rev- erently as any farmer fattening geese for foie gras: “Snails were confined upon islands, so that they could not escape, and were fattened on milk, wine must and spelt. When they became so fat that they could not get back into their shells,” explains the Cambridge World History of Food, “they were fried in oil.” Snails slide in and out of fashion. Dishing them up with parsley and garlic butter (beurre d’escargots) and serving them in their shells adds a veneer of French cuisine to a bistro. It does little for them other than coat them in a cholesterol-raising bath.


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“It takes an experienced chef, like Claude Bosi at Hibiscus in Mayfair, to put six eye-catching charcoal- coloured nuggets on a burrata pillow with a bordelaise sauce”


charcoal-coloured nuggets on a burrata pillow with a bordelaise sauce. It’s an upside- down take on the Burgundy classic escargots en meurette, where a poached egg sits on top of a red wine and snail soup.


It’s a missed culinary trick. Snails have three things going for them. Their texture and taste, when properly prepared, are both unique. They also soak up other flavours. Smart chefs know this, but they have to work out ways of making them look good on a plate – snails aren’t obvious designer food. Popped back in their shells they present well; out of it they are more challenging. It takes an experienced chef, like Claude Bosi at Hibiscus in Mayfair, to put six eye-catching


Planning The Hibiscus kitchen prepares a kilo batch of snails daily, sufficient to cover two services in the 70-seat restaurant. They arrive blanched and ready for poaching, the recipe’s first step. Bordelaise sauce is part of the basic mise en place. It’s also served with turbot on the current menu. The snails are finished individ- ually to order. Bosi doesn’t rely on sous vide, neither for storing the blanched snails nor after he has poached them.


The burrata is removed from the fridge at


the start of service and the artichoke shavings are kept in acidulated water.


Costing Bosi pays £18 per kg for the blanched, out- of-shell snails – enough for about 50 starter portions. They are on the £49 lunch (three courses including half a bottle of wine) and £100 dinner menus.


March 2016 | Best of Chef | 27


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IMAGES: ADRIAN FRANKLIN/HOSPITALITY MEDIA


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