Snails
“At the burial of a dead leaf
Two snails set off
Their shells are black
Crape around their horns
They set off into the evening
A very fine autumn evening
Alas, when they arrive
It is already spring.”
It is with this very beautiful poem by Jacques Prévert that the memory of small grey snails in tomato made my greed water. I was just a kid on rue Lafontaine near the Capus, where our neighbours, poachers of the streets and squares, sold us the fruits of their hunting and pilfering at friendly prices.
That is how I discovered thrushes, larks, pibales (elvers) and other roach, bleak, and snails that had been purged and cleaned; all that remained was to cook them.
Of course my mother, who came from Blaye, knew how to make them, as she said with a posh accent, “à la caudéranaise”. But what she preferred to prepare for us, with the last big tomatoes, their cheeks swollen with sun, was tomatoes stuffed with small grey snails.
Here is the recipe in a nutshell:
Scrub the snails vigorously with a nail brush, then cook them in a well-flavoured court-bouillon. Once cooked (15 min), take them out of their shells, bare, as Delteil would say.
Keep a little cooking broth and strain it through a sieve. With your fine tomatoes, which you will have hollowed out, prepare a mince to which you will add finely chopped Bayonne ham, shallots, garlic and a little thyme, and cook your snails again.
In this lovely preparation, reduce by adding a little cooking broth. Moisten with a good little white wine from our parts. Taste, season, adjust. The sauce must be smooth and tasty. Fill your tomatoes with a spoon, taking care to distribute the snails in equal quantities. No jealousy.
Arrange them on a tray as if on parade and put them in the oven at gas mark 9 for no more than 15 min. Serve hot.
It’s terribly good!
