Snails, wine, sundried olives, yogurt, weeds, sauerkraut, green smoothies, paneer and sourdough. All in a Saturday afternoon.
Ferment, cook, eat, share, experiment, learn, enjoy and play!
Elise and I organised a food skills day to share skills, recipes and ideas with anyone who would care to join us.
On the invitation, the event was declared to be a self-organising, DIO (do it ourselves) event.
I took a chance on the idea of collaborative learning, and asking participants to bring recipes they had never tried before, so we can all learn how to do it together. Bringing tried and tested recipes was welcome too.
Here’s a couple of recipes that were new to me.
Escargot
I gathered a few snails from my garden and front verge. Regular garden snails are the same as the ones in the fancy French restaurants. They are nocturnal, so easier to find and collect when they are out at night. After rain is a good time. They develop a lip on the front of the shell when they are mature. Gather only mature snails.
Letting them out to play before they are cooked is entirely unnecessary. They seemed in a playful mood as they came out of the jar, and the water took a few minutes to boil, so we released them onto the playground.
Before cooking, give the snails a rinse. Then throw them in a pot of boiling water and let them simmer for 15 minutes. Skim off the foam that forms on the surface of the water.
Take the snails out of the pot, and out of their shells. A fork and a twist should do it.
Give them another rinse.
Fry ’em up in garlic butter. We served them with pasta and spinach because it was available, but bread and salad could be good too.
This recipe is a composite of several found on the internet. I knew nothing about cooking snails before this, and had never thought to eat them.
Paneer
Paneer is Indian-style cottage cheese that is really easy to make, it needs no fancy ingredients or equipment. The whole process takes 15 minutes.
Bring 1 litre of full-cream milk to the boil. Add lemon juice or vinegar and turn the heat to low. The quantity of lemon juice required varies from half a teaspoon to half a cup in the recipes I’ve read, and apparently depends on the type of lemon, as some are more acidic than others. I guess use the amount of juice that causes the milk to separate.
Stir continuously as the milk curdles. It should take about two minutes for the milk to separate into curds (the solids) and whey (a clear yellowish liquid).
Place a muslin cloth in a colander, which is over a large bowl. Strain the mixture through the cloth, then hang it above a bowl for a few minutes to let all the liquid drain out.
Place the cloth full of cheese between two dinner plates, with something heavy on top. This will squeeze out any remaining moisture, and form the paneer into a firm block.
Paneer is traditionally used in Indian recipes, both curries and desserts. We fried it in butter and ate it with salt. It should keep for a few days in the fridge.
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