Monday, June 15, 2015

Creepy & Delicious Food Dishes: Escargot



Hello Darlings, 

Recently, I bought some canned escargot, and I know this is an unremarkable purchase for some people. However, I did not buy the escargot for the snails. I bought them for the shells which were included.  I wanted the shells for my large aquarium as the minerals and other properties in the shells are beneficial to the fish and the water in which they live. Plus they look pretty.

So after washing the shells for aquarium use, my dilemma was what to do with the snails.  We are not normally eaters of every creepy crawly that we as kids grew up seeing only after a hard rain (Northern folks with Southern branches). Such fine fare usually got smashed or salted to stop their slow trespasses. 

So here we are now with a container of escargot (very large snails by any other name) and no one in the house wanted them no closer to our digestive system than the label on the container.
At first I considered flushing them but the ten dollar price tag ceased that idea. Then I tried giving them away but no takers. So what to do with a pricey food item no one found appetizing to look at much less eat. 

My only recourse was to cook and eat them. This meant me and not my husband. He started inspecting every ground meat dish I made until he believed that the meat contained nothing exotic.

After viewing and rejecting several recipes online, I finally pulled together the following recipe with ingredients I like to eat and generally keep on hand to make the following breakfast recipe.

------

Breakfast Escargot

Ingredients:

4 oz slice mushrooms
1 can Roland Escargots Giant Snails, 7.75 oz
1 large garlic clove, sliced
½ teaspoon dried parsley
½ teaspoon dried thyme
4 tablespoons margarine  
6 breakfast low sodium sausage links
8-10 shakes red wine vinegar
Pepper to taste

Directions:

1.      While cooking sausages in skillet, clean and slice mushrooms and garlic, set aside.
2.      Remove sausages from skillet, set aside
3.      Drain,  rinse, and dry skillet
4.      Spray skillet lightly with cooking spray and heat to medium heat.
5.      Add the mushrooms and cook for 1-2 minutes, stirring constantly.
6.      Remove mushrooms, drain skillet if necessary, set mushrooms aside
7.      Cut snails in half and each sausage into three sections
8.      Melt margarine in same skillet,
9.      Add and sauté snails for 2 minutes.
10.  On a medium high heat return mushrooms and sausage to skillet; add parsley, thyme, garlic, red wine vinegar, and black pepper
11.  Cook for 2 minutes. 

Serve with a mound of soft scrabble eggs, hot buttery grits, and raisin and cinnamon toast.
-----

There you have it, a delicious and exotic breakfast created with escargot. Although it is not a meal I would serve regularly, I truly enjoyed it and hope you escargot lovers will too.

Chow!