La Ferme aux Escargots

In the imagination of mainstream America, eating snails probably tops the list of exotic and strange French dietary habits  (weirder even than the relishing of frog legs and incredibly stinky cheese).  Perhaps if you've visited France, you've dared, in the interest of cultural openness, to order a platter of escargots à la bourgignonne.  If you did, you probably remarked to your relief that these snails taste predominantly of that quintessentially American condiment, garlic butter.  The snail in this concoction manifests its presence transiently by a vaguely chewy sensation unmarked by any particular flavor--at least, any flavor stout enough to stand up the garlic, shallot, and parsley in the "snail butter " (beurre aux escargots) which overpowers the snail itself.

Personally, I've never been a fan of this dish for that very reason:  it leaves me feeling as if I've just eaten a giant bowl of garlic butter.  And as the garlic in the butter is rarely degermed, it often leaves me with indigestion as well.  But then I had the opportunity to taste snails autrement, prepared with sautéed fresh autumn cèpes, wrapped in a steamed savoy cabbage leaf, and garnished with a pool of mellow garlic cream.  Heaven!  Since then, you could say I've been on the snail trail. 

In my snail search, the first thing I noticed was that almost all snails sold in France came already stuffed back into their shells and stuffed with that noxious snail butter, then frozen.  I had trouble finding snails nature--that is, already subjected to the lengthy preparation that precedes their being cooked (more about that below), cooked, and, and then, say, canned or frozen.  And when I did find them, they came from countries of Eastern Europe.  I distrusted these eastern snails.  I wanted the real thing from sainted Burgundy, the region where the snail is both powerful symbol and a mascot of sorts.

I finally found real Burgundian snails in an elite shop in Montmartre at more than 20 euros the can.  I recreated the dish that had seduced me so, and it was delicious.  So delicious that it made me want more--more snails and more knowledge about snails.  From my diverse reading and travels, I knew that eating snails is far from being a French phenomenon.  In fact, eating snails has always been a custom among poor populations throughout the Mediterranean basin, and perhaps beyond.  Snails have also been an important protein resource during famine and times of war.  Once, traveling in the barren Algarve region of Portugal, I witnessed people with buckets suddenly appear everywhere after a rainstorm--gathering snails.  I started wondering:  Can you eat just any snail?  In my mind's eye, I was seeing the big and juicy specimens I usually find hiding behind the climbing roses on the brick wall of the house in Normandy.  My mouth started watering.

Well, that question--among many others--was answered when I visited a snail ranch in Normandy.  Last fall, we'd picked up a brochure about it, but it was only open for visits in spring and summer.  We knew we had the right place when we saw this mailbox.  An amazingly large group of people had already assembled for the tour (given at 11 o'clock every day).  Apparently I wasn't the only one who wanted to know where those snails come from!

Well, for about two and half metric tons of them (around 5500 pounds), the answer is:  from within the walls of this old brick farm building.
At least, in the sense of "Where do babies come from."  Because behind those staid-appearing brick walls, torrid snail sex is happening!  But wait, first let's get intimate with the slimy little fellows (and gals, but which is which depends on the moment in time) themselves.

Our tour was enthusiastically led by the daughter of Sandrine Thierry, a certified helicologist (yes, France has special degrees for that sort of thing) who was taking a break from the snails that particular weekend.  This enthusiastic and knowledgeable young person led us into the, well, snail boudoir, I suppose you could call it.  This rather dank and strange-smelling chamber was literally--forgive the expression--crawling with snails.  A humidifier spewed out water vapor while snails crawled on the floor and especially over and under ranks of benches that were arrayed at waste height throughout the chamber.  At intervals along the benches were plastic cups of soil with pale and somewhat sinister-looking clusters of small spheres resembling alien caviar.  And smears of something white were all over the benches.  This turned out to be powdered milk formula normally used to nourish lambs, but which turns out to be an ideal food for snails which are exhausted from making love and laying eggs (the afore-mentioned pale clusters).  But as an introduction, we were offered to hold a snail in our hands (I declined, but many participants were braver than I).  These were not just any snails, Miss Thierry informed us.  They were of the breed petit gris d'Algerie (little gray of Algeria), which is actually a hybrid between the reknowned Burgundy snail and the petit gris of meridional France.

Indeed, the snails didn't seem shy.  They didn't even pull in their tentacles when they were placed in outstretched hands.  Of course, after about 10 minutes of informative discourse, it was time to return the snails to their lunch benches, and then, well, one was left with a certain slimy residue on one's hand.  What to do?  I observed these stalwart volunteers look around for a sink.  But Miss Thierry brightly explained that "snail spit" (la bave d'escargots) is good for the skin and is in fact the active ingredient in a French skin care product, aptly named Elicina.  (Some subsequent internet research easily located this skin cream, bravely boasting literally "snail spit" as its active ingredient.  There's also Biocutis, approved for sale in the U.S., in case you're interested.  Active ingredient: an extract of Helix aspersa Muller, none other than the succulent petit gris .)  How can this be? you ask incredulously.  Well, in true French spirit, I'll simply remind you that the snail has a remarkable ability to repair its own skin and shell when they are damaged.  So doesn't it follow that snail spit could repair your skin as well?  Okay, okay, I'm digressing.  But Miss Thierry did simply rub her slimy hand along her arm until the exudate had been absorbed by her skin.  Only one person in the audience followed suit.  The others just sort of held their hands away from their bodies.

Miss Thierry went on to explain snail anatomy.  She stuck one onto a transparent plastic curtain so we could see its rasping mouth--the part that makes those giant holes in your hosta leaves.  She pointed out that snails have 4 tentacles (the lower one is visible in the photo at right), and see that little bump right where you'd expect the snail's ear to be?  Well, that's it's sexual organ.  I don't know what else to call it for reasons which will become clear below.  Imagine having your, you know, sort of coming out of your neck..weird, wouldn't it be? 

So after the snails have feasted for a while on their powdered milk, they become amorous and...snail sex happens.  I think that's about the most you could say.  Now, here's the interesting part.  At the time of the Act, both partners are male.  But  right after the act, they transform themselves into females, and are able to be fertilized by the--is it sperm in this case?--lingering in their bodies.  The act itself lasts several hours, plus--here's the kinky part--it involves double penetration (Miss Theirry's exact words)!.  Perhaps the mysterious transsexual process actually begins to occur during the coupling.  This point was not well elucidated.  Anyway, afterwards, the fertilized snails seek out those disgusting little cups of soil and lay their eggs, which are clearly visible through the clear plastic.  After daily inspection of the cups, the egg-laden ones are capped with a plastic lid (kind of like a take-out drink cup) and placed on a shelf for a 15-day incubation period.  (A colleague of the Thierrys tried to market snail caviar, but apparently without great success.)

Miss Thierry popped the lid off one of the incubated cups.  It was plastered with miniscule snails, complete with tiny, fragile shells.  Now what, you ask?  Well, the baby snails get set free, sort of, in a giant greenhouse planted with radishes and furnished with low benches laden with smears of Snail Chow.  Snails can be subject to infections, and radish leaves, it seems, seem to boost the snails' immune systems against such sinister infections.  After all, and tragically, as Miss Thierry pointed out, what can you do if your snails get sick--call the vet?  The radish leaves also provide shelter for the snails, which, as the gardeners among you surely know, prefer to hide in the shade during the daytime and come out to do their foraging at night--or just after a soaking rain.

The Thierrys actually have two greenhouses, each one with a slightly different regime of bench heights with which they are experimenting.  Peering into them was oddly haunting because...not a snail was to be seen, of course, it being a bright and sunny day.  How, I wondered aloud, did the Thierrys "harvest" the snails when the time came?  Did they stalk the snails at night, with flashlights?  Miss Thierry solved the mystery for me.  By the time the snails are ready for harvest, she explained, nothing is left of the radish plants but some dry, bare stalks.  And--you guessed it--there's no where to hide! But she found this lovely child snail just to prove to me that the snails were in there!

Of course, our tale is now approaching doomsday, from the snail's point of view.  In autumn, the snails are gathered up into burlap bags containing 5 kilos each.  The Thierrys make a party of this, inviting their friends and neighbors to help in the harvest.  The sacs are then hung in an open hangar for several weeks.  The poor snails, at the mercy of cold wind, begin purging the moisture from their bodies and secrete a cap or sort of door over the opening in their shells.  They have gone dormant, and it's just as well.  Not only does the purging process make them succulently ready to eat, but they'd probably prefer not to be wide awake when they get dumped into the cauldrons of boiling water prepared to dispatch them. 

We took a short walk over to the "laboratory," where there's a giant mixer for preparing the snail butter, a cauldron for cooking the snails in court bouillon, and an autoclave.  On the way, we passed these predictable garden decorations (left).  Now we come to the explanation of why canned French snails are so expensive, and why, like foie gras, snails, formerly a food of the poor, are now ironically considered a holiday luxury.  Once the snails have received their coup de grace parboiling, they have to be fished from their shells--by hand.  Pristine shells are reserved for subsequent escargots à la bourgignonne production.  Then the snail bodies are cooked in a court bouillon of white wine and herbs.  Finally, they are either prepared in the classic bourgignonne way, stuffed back into a shell, plugged with snail butter, placed in a special plastic platter and flash frozen, or, canned without further seasoning.  "Can you eat any kind of snail?" I asked Miss Thierry, as they were out of the plain canned variety I would have liked to buy, and thinking of my fat snails back home.  "I don't know of any poisonous snails," she answered. 

Should you like to try eating your garden snails, make sure to purge them for a week first (as you don't know what they've been eating, now, do you?).  You do this by confining them and simply starving them for a week to ten days, or by feeding them flour until their excrement becomes white.  Okay, I can tell I've reached the point in my narrative where I should stop.  Perhaps you'd rather be reading what I ate for dinner last night in my favorite Parisian bistro.  If so, I'm sorry to disappoint you.  But remember, this is a tale you could only have read here.


La Ferme aux Escargots
300 Allée des Colimaçons
76400 Maniquerville (betweeen Goderville and Fécamp, near Epreville)
www.fermeauxescargots.com
Tel. +33 (0)2 35 29 25 93
Guided visits from 1 April through 31 August, Sunday through Thursday at 11 a.m.
Adults 4€; children 2€