By Bryan Hemming
Published: June 6, 2009
Updated: June 6, 2009 PrintEmail
Little changes in Santa Catalina, where life still moves at snails’ pace.
And talking of snails, throughout May and June the entire pueblo wibbles to the sound of diners slurping caracoles, as they are known out here. It’s snail time. Featured on the menus of most cafés and bars, the seasonal speciality is a must for those who enjoy devouring the local environment. But you have to remember not to bite into the crunchy bits.
As summer approaches, the timid molluscs, which spend most of the year clinging to dried straws, walls and signposts in clumps – hurting nobody – are hunted down and harvested in ecologically unsound numbers to form the basis of a regional delicacy.
Unlike the escargot of France they can be as undeveloped as the nail on your pinkie. Itinerant sellers set up boxfuls on street corners. Alive and kicking – though perhaps kicking is not quite the right word – the ill-starred victims live out their last moments attempting to escape their culinary fate. Sliding across each other’s shells and up the sides of boxes, makes a job on its own of keeping the products in the designated display area. It’s surprising how fast hordes of panicked snails can shift. A few gain liberty.
But most meet their end in a caldron of scalding water seasoned with herbs, and spices. Steeped in broth, they are served by the bowl to be sucked at leisure from their frail homes. Just like humans, the most reluctant tenants need a bit of prising.
Folklore has it the broth is good for your health. It can be ordered in glasses on its own as an accompaniment to any meal.
But it’s the slime factor I worry about. The snails’ revenge. Snails produce more slime than a toddler’s runny nose on a frosty morning. At the height of the snail season some Santa Catalinians knock back one or two glasses of broth a day.
Whatever claims are made for its healing properties, tumblers of diluted and seasoned snail snot were never served at our family table. Not as a remedy, nor as a refreshing beverage. As far as I can remember, my Swedish grandmother never alluded to the benefits of swilling down immoderate quantities of snail goo. And she knew what was good for you. If any members of the household did imbibe mollusc secretions, they kept it to themselves. Mere mention of the habit could’ve induced fits of vomiting in the otherwise healthy. It certainly wouldn’t be my first choice to ward off a summer chill.
That’s not to say I’m so squeamish about what I eat. Not for someone with a Butley background, that is, where all foreign food is eyed warily. Whenever the need has arisen, I’ve eaten snails in France and Spain. I even ate two entire sheep’s brains in one sitting once. By mistake.
My first encounter with grey matter outside skulls took place during a journey through the wilder parts of Anatolian Kurdistan last century. A travelling companion and I had paused at a wayside canteen for refreshment. Amongst the range of dishes on offer were some shiny, wrinkled objects swimming in oily liquid. My friend asked what they were. I guessed they were sheep brains. “I’ve never had brains,” he replied. Priceless. Worth travelling hundreds of miles through scrub and semi-desert just to hear him confirm what I’d been thinking most of the way. But your experience of my experience of having more than one brain in my head has yet to come. We both chose lentils that day.
A different place, a different time, a different friend and I stopped off at a bistro on a drive through France. Puzzling over the menu, we both settled on the same dish. Translated roughly, it was some sort of lamb gently fried in butter and oil seasoned with garlic and herbs. My mouth watered to a picture of juicy lamb cutlets. Sounded good. Yet something inside told me I should’ve listened to my French master when he said I’d be lost in France with my ignorance of the language. A lack of French might’ve been responsible for Bonnie Tyler wailing about being lost in France on her hit record of the 1970’s, was his coup de grace. The whole class roared in the patronising way pupils use to humour their teachers.
To my horrible surprise the waiter returned bearing plates of sizzling sheep brains thinly cloaked with a dousing of garlic butter and cunningly disguised by a couple of sprigs of parsley. Two for each of us.
Regarding them suspiciously my finicky friend asked the waiter what they were. Luckily, the waiter didn’t understand. Both looked at me for enlightenment. Deducing the spectacle of an Englishman throwing up at the mere sight of French cooking, without tasting so much as a morsel, might offend Gallic sensibilities, I feigned ignorance, and tucked in with as much gusto as I could muster. My friend followed suit, but with far less abandon, commenting whatever they were they weren’t too bad. Choosing the right moment, I waited till both brains were well on their way to his stomach, and we’d downed a couple of cognacs, before asking how they were sitting. Not too bad. Then I told him. After which, he didn’t feel too good.
Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. The honour of France hadn’t been stained, and the mettle of the English had been proven once again.
However, sometimes trying to be kind can be cruel. Over a weekend at his Shropshire cottage, I saw the same friend’s jar of beatnik morning cereal crawling with tiny weevils. Despite his fastidious nature, he didn’t seem to have noticed. Or perhaps he didn’t mind.
It’s the sort of dilemma that requires delicate handling. Is it polite to tell one’s host his breakfast is moving all by itself? Or is it not? I mean, for all I know, it could’ve been part of a New Age muesli experience. Some health food shops might even be adding weevil eggs for protein. To take the plunge could’ve risked looking like some dullard completely out of touch with the latest food fads. The sort of person who thinks Pizza Hut is cool. A food moron. Deciding the task of informing an old acquaintance his organic muesli was rather more organic than he might think, too daunting – especially as he’d already gone through the best part of a kilo – I settled for a breakfast of coffee. Anyway, what harm could a few spoonfuls of live weevils do to a man who’d eaten two sizzling hot brains for England? Chomping away merrily, he remarked I didn’t know what I was missing. I did.
If that doesn’t put you off your corn flakes, nothing will.
