To celebrate National Escargot Day, One if by Land, Two if by Sea is serving a special menu topped off with a special dessert: a meringue piped in the shape of a snail, served with licorice ice cream and mint granite.
photo: courtesy of One if by Land, Two if by Sea
Arguably one of the lesser food holidays, May 24th is National Escargot Day, a day when gourmands are invited to sup on and celebrate the lowly gastropod. But why does it take place at the end of May? The same reason that Thanksgiving is celebrated in November: The harvest. Of the thousands of varieties of gastropods that slowly crawl around the planet, only a little more than 100 of them are edible, and a mere two – the helix pomatia and the helix aspersa – are popular among diners. Of those, most of the pomatia snails sold commercially come from public land in Burgundy, France, and are harvested in May according to Potironne's snail distributor Doug "the Snailman" Dussault. And so National Escargot Day, the exact origin of which is up in the air, lands conveniently as the springtime harvest wraps up and makes its way down the supply chain.
But first the snails must be prepared for travel. After the annual harvest, snails are cooked for two-and-a-half hours to destroy any parasites, and then canned for distribution. "Snails are never served fresh, they are always frozen or canned," explains Craig Hopson, chef at NYC's famed One if by Land, Two if by Sea.
Though canned snails are ready to roll from the get-go, most chefs prefer to cook them further before serving. Traditionally, in the old French brasserie restaurants, says Hopson, chefs would remove the snail and then it put back in the shell with snail-flavored butter and bake it in the oven. While that method is still beloved by many, more and more toques are losing the shells altogether. For his special Escargot Day menu, all of Hopson's gastropods have been de-shelled.
But snails can and should be celebrated all the time. The tiny treats – edible snails are between the size of a dime and a half-dollar – are relatively eco-friendly compared to most other meats in this day and age. A wild animal with a controlled harvest, the snail is in many ways, according to Dussault, the perfect protein: "They are sustainable, have no methane emission, no processing... all the things people worry about.”
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