"White caviar"
As reported at
The Telegraph:
Pushing open the door of a large, plastic-framed barn, Mr Trobalon shows off the surprising jewel in his farming crown: pens full of slithering snails.
The animals – 6,000 of them – are kept to feed the latest gastronomic trend sweeping Europe: "white caviar", or snails' eggs. A kilo of the pearl-like eggs retails for €1,800 (£1,600), and Mr Trobalon, a former pest control expert, admits surprise that he has gone from killing snails to actively cultivating them.
"It's funny how things turn around," he said. "I used to sell 80 tonnes of chemicals a year to kill snails. And now I'm rearing them."
Chefs throughout Spain and Europe are rediscovering the highly-prized delicacy, which centuries ago starred in banquets for wealthy Romans, Egyptians and Greeks. The tiny eggs, which taste slightly earthy and are recommended marinated in herbs, are also known as "Pearls of Aphrodite" for their supposed aphrodisiac quality...
"It is a highly unusual product and made in a labour-intensive way. It takes four hours to fill a 50 gram tin, as each tiny egg is selected by hand using tweezers...
The high cost of snails' eggs - cheaper than the finest beluga caviar, which fetches €4,000 euros a kilo, but more than three time the price of farmed black caviar - makes it a risky ingredient for chefs to experiment with...
He showed The Sunday Telegraph how to make his spring speciality - a broad bean, pea and "white caviar" crostini, with an asparagus reduction. Popping a handful of the eggs into his mouth, he described the flavour as "autumnal, earthy".
Photo: Harriet Alexander
Popping a handful of the eggs into his mouth
ReplyDeleteThat's one expensive handful.
--Swift Loris
With my continued and brutal war with snails and slugs vis a vis my garden (I have been trying to rid myself of them without resorting to slug/snail poison, it seems unfair) I view this delicacy in a Conan the Barbarian "lamentations of their women" kind of way. Eating the children of your enemies has to be the most barbaric thing possible.
ReplyDeleteI refuse to do so (and I don't have the pocket money).
One technique to rid your garden of snails (at least of some varieties) is to place a small shallow tub of at least 1 inch deep, and fill it most of the way with beer. That way they crawl in and drown. My very Victorian Grandmother refused to have anything to do with beer until she was told by her sons (Ph.D.'s in bio-sciences, all five of them) about this technique. She tried it, and it works.
ReplyDelete