Kitchen snails and garlic butter snails

Last trip to the west, I ‘signed’ two snail dishes. A dish bought from Cao Lanh, Dong Thap, but had to wait until Chau Doc, An Giang to find enough ingredients to process: fresh milk and chicken eggs, because the journey had to move from Cao Lanh immediately to Chau Doc on time. evening. The second snail dish is fried snail bulot with garlic butter. Both dishes are heartbreak in life.
Snails are back and better than before

The kitchen snails of Tinh Que establishment in Cao Lanh are becoming a commercial product that attracts attention. Previously, I only heard of this dish orally. How do you say that? Not at the end of the market. The establishment’s instruction manual for snails is on the package – a bamboo basket with wide eyes, the size of a human head. I don’t remember the verbatim, but the gist is that before steaming, put the snails in a large container and put three eggs in it with a bag of milk. Let it take about two hours for the snails to drink up before it is processed. People in the West know how to take advantage of the behavior of the common convex snail called pila: in the dry season, when you sleep, in the rainy season, you wake up to eat, to invent the kitchen snail dish. There are several types of edible apple snails: the field snail (pila polita), which lives in garden ditches, canals, along the edges of fields, in the fields, and snails (pila gracilis) (1), which live in places where there sedges – perhaps hence the name, and rock snails (pila?), which live in the mountains. In terms of quality, snails are the best, because the meat is chewy and lumpy. More than two decades ago, snails became increasingly scarce as a result of scientists calling for the import of golden apple snails for export. The golden apple snail is an invasive species that has become a scourge for rice-growing countries. As an invasive species, rapidly growing herds, spreading on a large scale, so according to the ‘territorial law’, ‘yes, I don’t have you’, the snail has almost disappeared. The basket of snails in the kitchen of the Tinh Que establishment. Photo: NGUYEN NGUYEN Snail snails are different from the common-eyed apple snail, which is the low, not pointed and tall snail tower like the bronze apple snail. In recent years, people in Dong Thap have chosen to raise snails a lot because of the higher commercial price, due to a time of scarcity. Buyers of snails in the attic also choose snails. The pila snail is an amphibian, lives on land during drought, sleeps all the time and breathes through lungs. In the rainy season, it lives under water, breathes with gills and goes foraging. According to that habit, people put snails in baskets in the attic of the kitchen for snails to sleep for a long time. When you want to eat snails, give them a ‘gracious’ meal of good food. Normal snail meat is delicious, feeding them milk and eggs will be more delicious. There is something to pay attention to the fire, so that the snail does not get tough. Eat bulot, fence the sea People who know how to eat bulot snails must first be cod from Newfounland from the late 19th century, then Normandy, French, etc., then Saigon and Can Tho. Not sure if I am the last person to know about this snail when eating them in Can Tho at the end of April 2021? Eating a snail, don’t say it’s good or bad, the more thought-provoking thing is how the French conserve resources through fishing restrictions. In 1970, the opening Granville auction attracted interest in the bulot sea snail. Before that, the luxury on the dinner table of Westerners only had oysters and red crayfish. As for snails, there are only snails living on land that many Vietnamese shake their heads. In 1980, a group of operators was formed, and in 1985, mining required a license. The smallest size snail to exploit is 4.5cm long. In 2000, due to a decrease in stocks, many measures were put in place: a fishing break in January, the time when snails spawn. The quota is 300kg per person and 900kg per ship, limiting the number of permits, increasing the separation distance from 1.9 to 2.2cm. The number of catches was reduced by 6,000 tons, the number of miners was reduced from 82 to 68. The catch of bulot snails is only using trap cages. Fishermen use cages with bait dropped on the sea floor to lure snails. Fishing as if it does not frighten the snail, stress reduces the quality of the meat. Stir-fried bulot snails with garlic butter. Photo: NGUYEN NGUYEN In the past, bulot snails were only caught by the French as bait for the large cod fishery in Newfoundland as far as Canada. Specifically, on May 18, 1886, the Newfoundland Parliament enacted a law prohibiting people on the island from trading with foreigners and especially not selling and exporting bait to French fishermen. This bait includes squid, herring or roe. Difficult to get wise, some French fishermen came up with the idea of ​​​​using bulot snails as bait for cod fishing. A long time thanks to the new type of bait, the catch is estimated to be five times more. Saint-Malo authorities, press fear a resource depletion. All of a sudden, the cod didn’t want to eat the bulot bait anymore. It wasn’t until the early 1980s that the snail, scientifically known as buccinum undatum, appeared on the dining table and in the kitchen. Within 20 years, the French quickly realized the problem: the output was getting bigger and bigger, the resources were getting exhausted. Obviously the snail meat is delicious. The day I ate snail bulot in Can Tho, the shop sold by the slice. The dish is called snail bulot sauteed with garlic butter. For the French, known for their fine dining, they say an ontological question has long haunted them about the relationship between snails and mayonnaise: can the former survive without it. the second one? It’s like the correlation between snails – the national drug of the West – and garlic butter. It’s horrible to be missing either. But Vietnamese tongue overturns two pairs of categories. They let snail bulot survive with garlic butter. That day I ate delicious and fragrant. But the smell of the sea is only very light, maybe it is a more subjective feeling, because in Vietnam, I used to eat all kinds of sea snails. Bulot snails from France are imported to Vietnam in the form of frozen snails with their shells intact. Many places sell online for prices from 350,000 VND or more, depending on the size. But certainly there is no milk snail like milk squid, milk anchovies, milk crabs in Vietnam. Strict European fishing regulations. The last class snail is 4.5cm, each class is 2.2cm apart. The people of Granville are also worth learning that, although snails are found in many places in France, they have registered for geographical indications early. The Protection of Geographical Indication (PGI) for the Granville Bay bull snail was granted on February 7, 2019, after 7 years of filing. PGI is the quality talisman of this bay snail. —– (1) – Ngo Thi Thu Thao, Le Van Binh, Comparison of some morphological and reproductive biology characteristics of the field snail and the autumn snail in Dong Thap province, Can Tho University.