What two dishes do you immediately associate with French cuisine? Before coming to France, I would have said: escargots and frog legs. As it turns out, these two rather exotic dishes are not nearly as widespread as one would think. I’ve only eaten frog legs once… in Switzerland. As for escargots, many French people have never even tried them before!
Nico, on the other hand, grew up hunting escargots, or cagouilles as they are called in the regional dialect (the pronunciation is along the lines of [ka-gooey]). Over the last few weeks, whenever the weather was right, we would pull on our rubber boots, grab our wire buckets, and check out the numerous secret spots where our slimy little buddies tend to congregate.
On multiple occasions, we went at night with headlamps and on one such evening, got the car stuck in a field and yours truly had to push it out!
After each hunting foray, we would dump the poor little guys into a metal cage in the courtyard where they lived in captivity munching salad, much to the delight of our two-year-old nephew. Yesterday was their day of judgment. After weeks of imprisonment, the sentence was harsh: death by boiling with nettles. Before this rather cruel end, however, each snail had to be individually rinsed and washed. There were 300 of them. While they might not move very quickly, between runaway snails and four curious kittens, we had our hands full! Once the condemned were clean, into the pot they went with a bunch of nettles. (Apparently the nettles help purge the cagouilles of their slime.)
After they had boiled for a while, we had to clean each one individually yet again. Then and only then did the actual cooking begin! All 300 snails went back into the pot with parsley, garlic, white wine, sausage meat, and bread bits to simmer for several hours. I strongly suspect that this labor-intensive process explains why escargots cost so much in a restaurant! When we had finally finished, my mother-in-law winked at me and said, “That’s all there is to it!”
We had them for lunch today and while the sauce was delicious, I felt slightly guilty about eating my buddies; we had quite a history together!
At this very moment, Nico and a friend are out hunting more cagouilles. Secretly, I’m hoping they get skunked.
