Food In The Garden, Revisited

Warning to the squeamish or vegetarian - look away now, before you get upset by what follows the pretty leaves and colourful flowers...

A few weeks after I started blogging, in September 2006, I posted a piece entitled Food In The Garden.

What aroused my interest at the time was the realisation that the flowering "weeds" growing outside my bedroom window were nasturtium, a type of giant cress brought to Europe from its native Peru by the Spanish conquistadors. Nasturtium leaves are edible as a salad and the pickled unripe fruits make a good substitute for capers.

Subsequently I discovered many other edible plants in my Hackney garden, including nettles (excellent for making soup) and dandelion (recently blogged about by Pim and Vanessa, amongst others).

But when I went out into the garden to collect food last Saturday, my mission was not for vegetation. I had been tasked by my college lecturer Mrs. Godfrey to collect some food to be served as amuse bouches in my college fine dining restaurant, The Escoffier Room. No ordinary "bend down and pick it up" garden food this. A crafty little adversary with a knack for disguise, nocturnal habits and a liking for dark and moist out-of-the-way hiding places.


Whereas I might once have been wary of the prospect of anyone consuming gastropod molluscs gathered from a Hackney garden, I was fully wised up having read Scott's excellent post of a few weeks ago.

I already knew about purging molluscs by feeding them with oats, but Mrs. Godfrey taught me a clever trick here. By feeding the snails on pieces of carrot, you provide a handy colour marker by which to check whether or not their digestive tracts have been thoroughly purged. Clever, eh?

Despite dire warnings on several websites that anything up to a fortnight might be required to ensure that they were free of toxins, three days turned out to be quite adequate.

By Tuesday morning, refreshed with a cold water spray and a good clean-out each day, my little friends were ready for the trip across London to Victoria and their lunch duties.

With the snails in my college kitchen and eagerly awaiting release from their tupperware container, they were almost ready for the table. But before any mollusc munching was to take place, my little garden friends would go through two cooking stages.

The first stage involved getting a pan of boiling water on the go. Simply dropped into the boiling water and left for seven to eight minutes, the snails were sufficiently tenderised for the second stage - sautéing.

By this point my mobile home occupants weren't at all fussy and a simple preparation involving crispy pancetta, minced garlic, a knob of butter and a pinch of roughly chopped parsley was all these guys required to attain a state of grace.

We served them to the restaurant customers, with a piece of frisée lettuce, on little Chinese soup spoons laid out on dinky little underplates. From the feedback we gathered from front of house it was clear that every customer had enjoyed them, or at least had tried them before declaring that it wasn't really their cup of tea. Success!

Sorry about the photo quality. I didn't have my camera handy, so I had to use my mobile phone. But only to take the picture of a snail - not for a chat.

Because, as with some rather more famous molluscs, my little friends were by now in no condition to answer a phone call:

"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes.

"O Snails," said the Carpenter,
"You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none--
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

(With apologies to Charles Lutwidge Dodgson.)