French Cooking: Italian Cooking:
Being a foodie means I love to cook all kinds of food. I love Italian cooking and I love French cooking. This week I am going to bring to you a blend of both French cooking and Italian cooking. This weeks recipes is Pasta Con Le Escargots. Yes! Pasta with snails! Delicious! I always like to do something that is a bit different and I thought that this blend of French cooking and Italian cooking would be an eye opener to say the least. My humble beginnings in the kitchen came from working in an Italian restaurant so I am no stranger to Italian cooking at all. I am however not the best versed in French cooking so this week I thought to bring both worlds together.
Most of the time Escargots are basically served in French cooking and made simply by cooking them in olive oil with garlic and other herbs and spices of the day and then eaten on a plate by themselves or adding on top of something like pasta. This is mostly in French cooking however. Now, when you add something like shrimp to pasta you are basically eating a sea insect and in the case of eating Escargot you are eating an air breathing insect. So let me take a moment and talk a bit about what Escargot is:
Basically as stated Escargots are land snails that are cooked in eaten and usually served as a started in fine French cooking venues. Escargot is the French word for snail as cargol or caracol is the Spanish word for snail. Not all snails are created equal and therefore not all snails are used in French cooking or in Italian cooking either. The standard species of escargot that is utilized in French cooking is called Helix Pomatia and there is also the Helix Aspersia or "Petit-Gris" and the Helix Lucorum.
In French cooking the varieties of eaten snails are first purged(Purging the escargot is a matter of starving them for a time to create hunger in them and then feeding the escargot something healthy like cereal or cornmeal. This process helps the escargot to clean and purge the undesirable elements from their digestive tracts to make them suitable for consumption.) then killed and removed from the shell and cooked in garlic and butter in French cooking or in red wine or beer/ale in other cultures such as the Maltese or Sicilian cultures and then are put back into their shells for presentation purposes and then the sauce poured over the snails for serving. The eater of the snails is then provided with a special set of snail tongs to hold the shell and a snail fork to remove the escargot from the shell to be eaten. Your average serving of escargot is between 6 and 12 escargot.
There is more to snails then just French cooking or even Italian cooking as there arm many varieties of snails from around the world being eaten in different ways. Whether in Italian cooking or French cooking snails are considered a gourmet food. In countries like Africa the giant land snails are produced for food commercially. There are sea snails, land snails and fresh water snails that are harvested for food in places like the Phillipines, Spain, Algeria, Morocco, Sicily, Portugal, Greece, Vietnam, Loas, Cambodia, even China and parts of India. It's just amazing! In Indonesia for example snails are fried and used in satay dishes called Satay Kakul! Yum! I am going to be making more snail dishes in the near future I can just tell! Please visit my Youtube channel today: https://www.youtube.com/user/MrEZCooking
[amd-zlrecipe-recipe:55]
No comments:
Post a Comment