The height of slow-food, France serves snail caviar
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SOISSONS, France (Reuters Life!) - If you want your guests to linger over an exclusive entree at a festive dinner party, why not try a novelty in slow-food -- snail eggs. The French started eating snail eggs on a small scale in the 1980s, but the pasteurized product failed to catch on.
A few years ago breeder Dominique Pierru revived the 'caviar d'escargot' by making it more pure and fresh.
"I once tasted the old caviar d'escargot and I found it dull," said Laurent Couegnas, the head chef and owner of the Escargot Montorgeuil restaurant in Paris, which is one of a few places to serve the delicacy.
"But when Dominique let me taste his product, it was something different, very interesting, slightly salty," he said.
At a snail farm near Soissons, 60 km (40 miles) northeast of Paris, Dominique grows the 'Petit Gris' snail and puts thousands of them in a nursery where they lay around 100 small eggs in a single session just once a year.
Pierru hopes to farm 200 kg (440 lb) of eggs this year, and 600 kg in 2008.
He feeds the snails on greens and powdered cereals, pampering the animals until they lay a small clutch of little white, pearl-like, eggs.
After collecting them and cleaning the eggs in a special hygienic room, Pierru puts them into a brine with special sea salt and some rosemary. Then they are put in jars which are closed in a vacuum.
"It tastes like undergrowth after the rain," Pierru said.
He supplies several restaurants and is getting orders from Japan, Belgium, Australia. With limited supply and rising demand, a jar of 120 grams sells for 200 euros ($290).
"It's different than sturgeon caviar of course. First the size, snails' eggs have the size of large salmon eggs. Then the taste -- sturgeon caviar has a very pronounced taste and snails' eggs have a very delicate taste. I would not eat it by spoonful," Couegnas said.
In the restaurant, cook Frederic Giraud makes a dish with a carpaccio of raw scallops brushed with olive oil, with some garlic, parsley, 'yuzu' Japanese lemon and croutons, topped with a good helping of snail caviar mixed with fresh cream.
The dish costs 31 euros.
(Writing by Marcel Michelson, editing by Paul Casciato)
