Snack on that! Are insects the future of food?
By Gavin Haines
It might not be the shrewdest observation made by a journalist, but snail poo stinks.
Of course you can’t smell it when one of them goes to the toilet in your pansy beds but in large quantities, the stuff reeks.
My visit to Dorset Escargot, a commercial snail farm near Wimborne, was certainly an aromatic experience.
Owned by Tony Walker, he has the unenviable job of hosing out the excrement created by the tens of thousands of snails he breeds on the farm – a chore he was finishing when I arrived.
Tony started the business in 2006. Celebrity chef, Anthony Worrall Thompson, was his first customer and since then Dorset Escargot has been doing a roaring trade.
“They’re becoming so popular we can’t keep up with demand,” beams Tony, who supplies some of London’s top restaurants, including Claridges. “We’re hoping to farm 10,000 snails per week by the end of the year.”
Britain’s steadily growing taste for snails has been a long time coming. They might be de rigeur on dinner plates across the Channel but we have been slow, even by a snail’s standards, to embrace these Marmite molluscs (you either love them or hate them).
But chefs and diners across the country are finally discovering the delights of snail meat and some of Tony’s clients, which have also included Gary Rhodes, are producing all manner of exciting escargot dishes; The Waldorf Hilton in London serves them with black pudding, wild garlic and boar bacon, The Bridge House Hotel in Beaminster, Dorset offers them as part of an all day breakfast, while Club Gascon in London has taken it one step further, having just introduced snail caviar to their Michelin star menu.
“I‘ve been experimenting with snails for two or three years, I’m coming up with new dishes all the time,” says Steve Pielesz, head chef at Dorset’s Bridge House Hotel.
“On the dinner menu at the moment we’ve got a mini snail pasty with chips, baked bean puree and homemade ketchup.”
Dishes like these might sound like a gimmick and, to a certain extent, they probably are. But there are many nutritional benefits to be had from eating these gastropods; snail meat is packed with protein and is fat free. I’m also told they are a great vehicle for flavour.
“They work really well in Asian dishes,” claims Tony, who eats snail several times a week.
The article continues at: http://www.theecologist.org/green_green_living/food_and_drink/1136267/snack_on_that_are_insects_the_future_of_food.html
