Nose To Tail At Home

You can pick the snails for this salad yourself.  I have done this, though it is quite emotional.  A few years ago on the Tiree in the Hebrides we collected a positive feast’s worth of snails, but what was to follow was too much for one of our party.  You have to starve them, so they were left in a bucket covered with pierced plastic wrap to prevent escape and left to purge.  Days seemed to pass watching the poor captive snails leaving trails of snail poo on the sides of the bucket.  Eventually someone cracked and freed them, much to everyone’s relief.  If you are of harder heart and can get over this difficult stage, which takes about four days, you should then par-boil your snails for about 20 minutes.  Remove them from their shells with a pin…