Snails mandrogna style

Snails normally feature in refined specialist menus and are reserved for aficionados. Furthermore, the recipes for cooking them are usually French.

The recipe which follows represents the gastronomical and geographical meeting of three neighbouring regions. The coastal region of Liguria centred on Genoa which mirrors the French style of presenting the snail in its shell (but without prior removal and with the addition of nuts) the North-central region of Emilia centred on Bologna (where, following the classic Bobbio recipe, the snail is served without its shell and is accompanied by both green and tomato based sauces) and last but not least the Northwestern Franco-piedmontese cooking (where the snail is removed from its shell, subsequently put back in and finally receives a brief baking during which anchovy butter, garlic and parsley are added). Due to the fact that Alessandria in South-Eastern Piedmont lies roughly where these three regions meet up, the Alessandrian way of cooking snails was bound to inspire an original and not very well-known way of cooking snails.

Once the snails have been collected, they should be left to purge. The snails should be left for two whole days in their shells and placed in a perforated box to provide plenty of ventilation. The box should be lined with vine leaves. This procedure serves not only to clear out their intestines but also to remove any traces of poisonous mushrooms they might have digested to which the snail itself is immune. Should snails be acquired from a snail farm, this step can be avoided.