FRIED SNAILS

Fried snails

Prior to consumption, it is necessary to treat snails and use a great number of ways to do it. There are many types of treatment used for making snails tasty and delicate. As usual cooks prefer using aromatic herbs and additions, but their variety is huge and it is hard to make correct choice. What is the way of cooking fried snails?

The Cretan technology can be taken as a basis of cooking this dish. It will help create extremely tasty and delicate dish. Greek and Cretan cuisines are different from the rest of the world cuisines with the pronounced taste of Mediterranean: fragrant olive oil, rich choice of spices, smell of the ocean seafood, wines and many other things that make this cuisine special.  The following recipe uses Rosemary as a herb to snail fillet to fill it with the most outstanding aroma.

For preparation of the Cretan recipe of “Helix Pomatia, fried in olive oil in Rosemary”

Helix pomatia snails – 1 kilo

• Olive oil 1 glass
• Grape vinegar 70 ml
• Dry rosemary 1 table spoon
• Fresh rosemary
• Salt or iodine-treated salt 4 – 5 table spoons

Only live snails are required for this dish. They are called cohley by the islanders; therefore, no marinade is required for this dish. Prior to preparation of the snails, they have to be cleaned carefully from mud. The snails may be fed with herbs and flour prior cooking.

Wash them in the cold water so that the snails might release their leg and ensure no mud remains on the shell and the fillet.Take the frying pan with the thick walls and warm it up. Add salt on the bottom of the frying pan, warm it up and place cohley on the bottom. Do not be afraid to make the dish too salt, since the snails will take as much salt as they need. Salt makes the meat dry, since it takes away the moisture. Keep the snails on the medium heat until they cease hissing. The next step involves removing the remaining particles of salt and adding some olive oil.

This dish will be as fragrant as possible, so do not afraid to add herbs. After adding olive oil, please let it boil for 5 minutes and sprinkle it with dry rosemary and water with grape vinegar, but be careful, since vinegar can set the dish on fire.As soon as the flavors are opened, you can take away the dish from the fire, then putting a sprig of fresh rosemary into the oil. This Cretan masterpiece is possible to be served in two ways:

The first one is laying cohley in shells on a flat dish, adding the fragrant sauce and serve the glass of white dry Aligote or Pino.The second way presupposes extracting fillet from shell and laying the meat on the plate, puring them with the sauce and adding a sprig of rosemary. A glass of the sparkling Brut can become the best possible addition to the dish.