500 words: Snails on Royal Albert

Flash fiction: 500 words (or thereabouts) 

The doorbell was ringing. It was almost four, siesta hour. Nothing moved at this hour, except children on bikes in the empty πλατεία. The only καφενείο and μπακάλι in the village were both closed; they hadn't opened their doors for two years now.

Evanthia had picked up the village routine very soon after moving to the island, on her husband's insistence, since they weren't making ends meet in the city. The daughter of a Greek Australian businessman, she had come to Greece at the age of twenty on her first unaccompanied holiday to the mother country. She met an electrician, giving up her university degree half-way through to get married. The children came soon after. Most Christmases were spent in Australia, while Easter was always at her husband's village – and her own parents’birth. After twenty years of living the life of a cosmopolitan middle-class housewife in a coastal Athenian suburb in an apartment bought by her parents, she suddenly found herself in an old εξοχικό, surrounded by grazing fields, olive groves and hilly countryside.

Before their move, they sent the children to their grandparents in Australia. The twins were due to start university; they may as well study where they would probably end up living. Evanthia’s family were surprised that she wouldn't go with them. Her family pleaded with her: “You’ll have a better life here" where Vaggelis could work in the family business (window cleaning high-rise buildings).

Her siblings could not understand what was holding her back. Evanthia wasn’t happy leaving an urban area with all its creature comforts. But she loved her husband too much to give him up, something she couldn't easily discuss with her divorced brother or unmarried sister. No matter how close they were as a family, Evanthia felt the taboo of discussing her paersonal happiness, lest she sounded condescending. To them, life was about moving up the employment ladder and into the property market, which their parents had already helped them to do anyway.

Vaggelis adamantly refused to hear anything of moving to the ξενιτειά. “I’m not leaving the country I was born and raised in at the age of 50 to die in a foreign country!” He’d been out of work for a year before making the decision to move away. “You don’t have to come with me,” he reminded her, “but don’t expect me to stay here when all around us people are leaving.”

What Evanthia found most difficult to cope with was the very basic way people approached life in the country. She knew nearly everyone, being related to most people, but they had very little in common. Their world as housewives was on a different tangent to her former life. Instead of the supermarket or the λαϊκή, they’d go to their fields for ingredients to cook with. Nothing was simply heated up in a microwave – everything required preparation from scratch.

“No wonder you’re bored,” her neighbour Keti told her. “Gather some snails and by the time you clean and cook them, the morning is over.”

Evanthia got off the sofa to open the door, where she found her neighbor holding a plate of some strange-looking dish.

“I bought you something!” Keti laughed sweetly, with a radiant smile on her face.  “You know Vaggelis loves this, don’t you?” On seeing the snail shells, Evanthia was seized with revulsion, but managed to keep a straight face as she didn’t want to disturb the peace. Vaggelis was sleeping, after working in the olive grove grafting wild trees with domesticated species. She took the plate from Keti’s hand and was just about to thank her when something caught her eye. She looked intently at the plate.

Snails on Royal Albert:my mother's crockery sits in my china cabinet, neavily unused.

“It’s freshly cooked, if that's what you're worried about,” Keti assured her, noticing her scrutinizing countenance.

“I know that,” Evanthia replied. “I just never expected to see χοχλιούς on Royal Albert.”

“Ρού-α τί?” Keti had always found Evanthia difficult to understand herself.

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Snails (Xοχλιοί)

A brief break from my travel musings to concentrate on the food of the holy times ahead of us...

A favorite lenten meal in Crete consists of snails, boiled or fried, spiced up with vinegar and rosemary, as the following mantinada (Cretan form of poetry) attests:

"Ο Κρητικός στη ξενιτειά πόσα λεφτά δε δίδει
να βρει μπουμπουριστούς χοχλιούς να φάει με το ξύδι;"

Oh, how much would a Cretan pay if he could only track
some fried snails dressed in vinegar when in a foreign land?

Coincidentally, I saw many people at Le Chartier ordering the snail dish, the most expensive entree on the menu. The snail shells were huge, up to three (yes, that's 3!) times the size of the snail shells depicted here. I couldn't bring myself to order them, for similar reasons to the opinion expressed by the protagonist of this story...

(from 'The Roots of the Greeks: The Cretans', 2009, Pigasos Ekdotiki - Pegasus Publications, translated from the Greek)

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

War (Πόλεμος)

I'm looking forward to visiting London's Imperial War Museum to see the Ministry of Food exhibition about food rationing and 'digging for victory' in Britain during the Second World War; here's a brief account of my mother-in-law's experiences in Crete of food shortages at that time. She turns 86 this year.

"Food coupons? No, we didn't have any of those where we were. I have heard something about them being used in Athens where they had no food, but in the villages where we could grow or raise something of our own, we never had such coupons. When the Germans came, they took all our food away from us. From one day to the next, we were thrown into the depths of poverty. Our food supplies were confiscated for the use of the German army*, we were told, and there was a war on, so we had no say in the business. In those days, you did as you were told, there was no discussion or thought about the matter, you just did as you were told and that was that. They took away all our animals, so we had no milk, no eggs, no meat, for a long time. We could go and pick the fruits off our trees in our orchards, but if the Germans saw us on the road carrying them back to our house, they'd confiscate them. We used to buy our grain, rice, sugar and other staples that we didn't grow ourselves from Hania, by trading our orchard produce, but when the Germans came, if they saw us riding our donkeys loaded with oranges in the koffinia**, they'd stop us on the road and take it. Our food was now the property of the German Army. So we couldn't bake bread; all the grain was confiscated, so we had no flour. We couldn't even make a pita. Every now and then, when my brother received a work order from the Germans, he was given a loaf of bread as payment. He would be asked to help carry something or build something or clear road, anything the soldiers told him to do. That's when we saw any bread in our house...

When she isn't gardening, she does crosswords or rolls her own filo pastry for kalitsounia.

"Hunger was very real in those days. We ate what we could forage, which was mainly snails and horta, whatever was seasonal at the time. The Germans never stopped us from foraging for greens. We'd walk in small groups, all girls, from our village (Fournes) to the neighbouring village of Ayia, where there were many open fields, and fill up the sacks we were carrying with us with snails and horta, nettles, wild artichokes, amaranth, nightshade, sowthistle, dock, dandelion, stuff like that. We picked whatever we could carry, and then walk back to the village carrying a huge sack on our back. Then we'd sit for hours cleaning the horta. If we were allowed to grow our own crops on our land, we wouldn't have had to do this so often.

The villages of Aghia and Fournes, Hania, Crete

"We could also pick seasonal fruit when we could get it, like wild pears and koumara. For sweets, we'd munch on carob pods. If my brother could trap a hare or bird, we would have some meat. We had to be creative in our use of food to make it last longer or to stop us from getting bored of eating the same things over and over again. I remember we often ate orange salad - orange segments dressed in olive oil and sprinkled with salt. I think that oranges with olive oil would sound very strange to most people these days.

I spotted this group of five old-age pensioners sitting in a modern takeaway bar in the town centre and surreptitiously took a photograph of them by looking at the mirror. They all look old enough to remember the war years. Each one will have their own story of the hunger they endured in their food-rich homeland.

"On one of those days after we'd been foraging and were walking back to the village, I saw a man's foot on the road, he seemed to have fallen over into the ditch. I was the only one to have noticed, so I went to investigate. I found two brothers, my neighbours, lying dead, killed by gunshots. Then I had to tell everyone else what I saw and it was a very sad time. My father had already been killed by firing squad in front of my mother, and one of my brothers was shot in the back when he was sitting in the kafeneion, in civilian clothing. There was no inquiry into their deaths, they were killed and that was that, because there was a war on, and we couldn't ask for any further clarification. My father had seen death so many times by then anyway. he'd spent 12 years as a soldier in Constantinople, coming back home every two years. I was born after his release in 1922, when the Greeks left the city forever. He'd tell us stories of his time there. During the fighting, when night fell, he and other soldiers would carry the dead and lay them in rows, and lie them on them, to get some rest before the next day's fighting began. And they never had enough water to drink. They'd lay rags in the corners of the shacks where they lived in the city - I have a photograph of him standing outside Ayia Sofia - and gather any moisture that dripped onto them from the rain, and they'd suck on the rags to keep themselves from dehydrating. He came back home after fighting a war, and died again in a war. I hardly had the chance to get to know him...

"I had hurt my leg, I can't remember how it had happened, I must have fallen and the wound never healed. It got bigger and bigger, and my leg began to hurt me. I thought I had gangrene. A German soldier saw my leg, and before I knew it, a whole lot of them were coming towards me. They had to hold me down because I was frightened, I didn't know what they were going to do to me. They cleaned the wound and applied some medication to it, and eventually I got better. They never bothered me again...

"Eventually we were allowed to go back to tending our fields and could keep a few chickens which gave us a fresh egg here and there and a bit of meat on special days. But it was very very hard work looking after the land, what with our menfolk gone or dead, the physical labour required to carry out the work on the fields made a man out of a woman.

"I suppose a food rationing system would have been useful, to make sure everyone had something to eat, because we really didn't have a lot to eat in those days, apart from horta, but where was the food going to come from if we didn't have any to start with? People were starving, they had little food to feed their children with, and they were starving too. Even if people had money, they couldn't buy anything with it because there was nothing available to buy. Money was worthless paper to all of us at the time, because what we wanted to buy was food, and there simply wasn't any food...

"When the confiscations stopped and we were able to start buying, growing and eating whatever we wanted, there was a shortage of flour since there had been no wheat planted. Some flour was brought into the villages from the food distribution schemes that began to operate after the Germans left. The grain was packed in large sacks with the letters:

Η.Π.Α.
(which stands for: Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες Αμερικής - U.S.A)

written on it. We didn't know what the letters stood for, and when we asked some of the village officials to explain it to us, they were dumbfounded too. So we just made up a phrase for it:

'Ηρθε Πάλι Αλεύρι
(literal meaning: came-again-flour: "Flour has returned")

because we had to make sense of it in some way, and this sounded logical to us.

One would think that she was dead tired of eating snails and horta after those hard years when that was all they had to eat. "No," she shakes her head, "we may have eaten a lot of them back then, but we always ate a lot of them anyway. We always liked our horta. The difference was that we had other foods to accompany them whereas during the war, horta was all we had. I don't know if it would have been better if we could just have been confined in our houses and had some bread and oil. That would sustain you for a long time and keep your stomach full, but horta, well, no matter how much you ate, you still felt hungry."

She still potters around in the garden as often as the weather and her old-age mobility problems let her. "I've always enjoyed gardening, and I've always liked vegetables in my meals, it depends on what you're used to eating, how you've been raised, your financial situation. Salads and greens are always tasty, especially if you know that the place where they were grown is free of pesticides and chemicals, but that's the thing these days: you want to eat something healthy, but you don't know who or what's been at it before you. Nothing grows these days without pesticides..."

*** *** ***

During World War II, the whole world was thrown into a real food crisis - there was a shortage of food everywhere, though at different rates and for different commodities, depending on where a person resided. Many people died during the Second World War as a result of hunger, especially those who lived in urban centres, since they relied mainly on food sources that were transported into their regions. People living in rural regions (like my mother-in-law) fared better because they were able to forage for food. The villages in the mountain areas of Crete (such as my mother's) were less affected, since the Nazis could not penetrate every nook and cranny of the rugged countryside, so that mountain residents would still be able to grow some grain, keep animals and produce cheese.

In Greece, the worst hit famine area was, naturally, Athens, mainly due to the imposition of a blockade of food distribution by Britain (who feared that the Nazis would view such movements as a military advantage), which was eventually lifted after pressure from the United States:

"Shortly after the Nazi invasion, the Greek nation began to live in difficult times due to lack of food. The food was all confiscated by the German occupiers and the entire rail network of Greece was destroyed so that food could not be transported. The people of Athens began to receive food with food coupons, while the black market "flourished". In the autumn of 1941 the first deaths from starvation were recorded in some poor neighborhoods of Athens."

(Photo included in: Hionidou, Violeta (2006) Famine and Death in Occupied Greece, 1941-1944 Cambridge University Press)

Initially, food coupons (δελτία τροφίμων - this is the only Greek phrase for the concept of 'food rationing') were issued to family groups in order for food to be distributed as fairly as possible. In 1941, they were changed to individual food coupons for each citizen, while only children and the invalid were entitled to milk rations; but when there was no food available, coupons were useless and so was money. At one point, people were not just hungry; they were starving, a situation which forces the victim to turn his back on civilised behaviour and resort to any means just to stay alive:

"Neither national nor local statistics on mortality are very reliable. The numbers reported by the neighborhood councils were more dutifully collected than that those for the whole country, but all statistics tend to understate - it is unknown to what extent - the actual mortality rate, since many deaths were not announced to the authorities. The relatives of the dead hid their bodies in public cemeteries at night, in order to maintain their food rations. Sometimes they buried them in hastily dug unmarked graves. Eventually the municipal services collected hundreds of anonymous corpses, so that these do not appear in official data."

People dropped dead in the street. Their corpses were shovelled onto trucks and buried in unmarked graves. Families did not report their dead, not even of their children, who were dying at the rate of up to 500 a day - if they did so, they would have had to hand in their ration books. If they died at the hospital, they did not go to pick up their bodies for the same reason - they needed to hang on to their ration books in order that they themselves may have a better chance to survive:

"The Hospital has a problem with the burial of the dead children. Initially, the dead children are transported from the Penteli Hospital in Athens. The parents, although informed by the Police Department, find a variety of ways to avoid their release, apparently because the ration books of the deceased child are vital for other family members. Thus, the dead children remain for some time unburied. Later in the summer of 1941, when there was no petrol for the hearse, the problem worsened. It was decided, therefore, to bury them in Penteli, after advising the father of the day and time of burial, unless the father wanted to receive and bury his deceased offspring himself. The risk, however, of the fallen angels being dug out by the hungry stray dogs was very real. To the staff of the hospital is added a new job, that of the cemetery shift, for those deceased young patients."

Greece suffered hunger and starvation during WWII because her food supplies were cut off. Hionidou (2006) argues that the lifting of the blockade was the most decisive step away from the famine. To die of starvation in Greece is almost impossible in a food-rich society, unless someone is taking your food away from you deliberately. Before World War II, Greece was producing two thirds of the food supply needed to support the population, which is quite a feat (while Britain was only producing a third of its food supply at the same period), considering that the population had doubled in less than two decades before the Greek famine struck, due to the arrival of the Asia minor refugees after their forced expulsion from Turkey.

Famine caused by deliberate withholding of food resources did not occur only in Greece during WWII. Northern continental Europe was also severely affected in a similar way, especially during the cold heavy winters when the land was covered with snow and no foraging was possible. The Dutch Famine resulted in long-term health problems of not just those affected by hunger, but even of their descendants, proving that hunger can have permanent effects that may be evidenced in future generations who did not suffer hunger.

Notes:
1. It would be a lie to tell you that I asked my mother-in-law to tell me about her life during the second world war; this is not the kind of conversation that she enjoys having. The above account is what I have gleaned from the few times that the topic of war arises in our house; there are some things that cannot be talked about easily. The story about the flour was told to me by my late father, who was five years old when his father (my grandfather) was killed on the second day of the Battle of Crete in 1941.
2. The word 'Germans' has been used to denote the Nazi soldiers, not the German people. This is the word that is used by the older population of Crete in reference to the period of time in question.
3. Because of Greece's (former??) peculiar state handout system, civil servants were (but I don't know if they still are) entitled to food coupons in modern times, because their permanent, you-can-never-fire-me, stable-hours, high-pension, full-health-care monthly-salary, five-days-a-week, holiday-and sick-leave-taken-care-of and overtime-well-paid jobs are (or should that be 'were'??) regarded by the government as lowly paid...

*The Germans confiscated everything, even the supply of the food necessary for survival such as bread, oil, flour, etc. The situation became desperate. Inflation annihilated everything, hunger plagued and decimated the skeletal people of all ages who died from starvation and malnutrition. The distribution of food was handled through coupons, and the shortages resulted in the black market, ie the prices of all food were so high, to the point that the people were forced to to exist by selling all their belongings, even items of large value, for just a few grams of bread or flour. Most of the starved dead lay on the roads and were transferred to cemeteries in carriages, but their relatives did not declare their death to the registrar so as not to have their rations cut. To survive, many people stole food from the Germans at the risk of arrest and execution.
** koffinia κοφίνια (plural of koffini κοφίνι): traditional large baskets that were loaded onto donkeys, one on each side, used to transport food products from the village to sell in the town.

Useful references:

Grace, Patricia (2009) Ned & Katina Penguin Publishers, Auckland (thanks to John Petris for this gift)
Hionidou, Violeta (2006) Famine and Death in Occupied Greece, 1941-1944 Cambridge University Press
League of Nations (1946) Food, Famine and Relief, 1940-1946 Series of League Of Nations Publications, Geneva
Mazower, Mark (2001) Inside Hitler's Greece: The Experience of Occupation, 1941-1944 Yale University Press
Norman, Jill (2007) Eating for Victory Michael O'Mara Books Ltd, London
The Imperial War Museum, London (for answering all my queries and providing me with extra information)

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Snails in a tomato stew (Χοχλιοί γιαχνί)

(This post was featured on the home page of BlogHer on 25th June, 2008)

Snails are an acquired taste. Not everyone would be happy about seeing them on their plate, except maybe at a restaurant where snails are treated like exotic decadence at a premium price. The origins of eating snails are far from luxurious. Peasants are the modern ancestors of the earliest foragers, and about the only thing that both societies had in common was that they needed to eat; snails could be sourced locally and were easy to find. Even my mother would forage for them in New Zealand, and they were quite large there, although not as large as the giant African snails that are used in the most elaborate recipe I have ever read about.

Once snails have gone dormant, they are at the eating stage, whether they have been reared in captivity or in their natural habitat. Snails are eaten as a main meal in Crete, so a normal serving size would include about 15-20 snails per person. There are many ways to serve snails in Crete, but in our house, we cook them in a stew. This stew always contains courgettes and potatoes - another way to use up our river of zucchini. It is a classic Cretan summer meal, and a special one for me: it is one of the most time-consuming, copiously prepared meals I make, apart from moussaka. Not everyone eats snails, but there is something for everyone to eat from the same pot that the snails are cooked in. And the most important thing to note about this meal is that all the ingredients (save the pepper) can (and were) sourced within 10 kilometers from my own home. It is most organic, and extremely local.

TO SEE IF THE SNAILS ARE ALIVE


An unbroken seal is usually a sign (99%) that the snails are alive. Put the snails in the sink and run cold water over them, filling and plugging the sink with about 2cm of water. The snails should eventually start showing signs of life at this stage. If they aren't moving or creeping out of their shells, they may still be alive. Don't forget that some of them move at snail's pace. I had just come home from the beach with the children when I started preparing this dish. I let them tell me when they saw moving snails. Admittedly, this process is time-consuming. We can't all hang around all day waiting to see if they're going to make a move. A quicker way to deal with this is to pull off the seal and prod their body. They will start to produce slime almost immediately. Don't throw them into boiling water before you can ascertain whether they are alive or dead. If you don't know what a dead snail looks like, believe me, they look pretty dead - think of a black corpse.

TO KILL THE SNAILS (censor's warning: PG)


You don't eat live sheep, pigs and cows, do you? So it is with snails; you have to kill them before you cook them. Michael Pollan discusses the pros and cons and the ethics involved in killing what he foraged in the Omnivore's Dilemma in order to cook and eat it; snails are not as unpleasant as large animals, but it's certainly an experience. When you do this yourself, you may feel like a cold-blooded killer. This is why a lot of animal-friendly people prefer to buy their meat prepackaged from supermarkets. The assistant at the meat counter in a supermarket, as described by Joanna Blythman in Shopped, "sells you a piece of meat as if it is a euphemism for a dead animal." Have a pot of boiling water ready and toss each snail into it. No blood, no mess, just loads of slime. Don't worry about the seal that is still stuck to the shell. This will clean far more easily once it has softened in hot water. At this point, if you raped the countryside to get the snails and find you can't eat all that you gathered, you can drain them, and freeze them to cook in a winter meal or during a fasting period, as snails are considered lenten fare.

TO CLEAN THE SNAILS:
The snails aren't exactly dirty; the last time they crapped was probably about 2-3 weeks before you honed in on them. Their seal is very strong and adheres to the shell as if it's been stuck with glue. For aesthetic reasons, it needs to be removed (unlike my koumbaro, you don't really want to be eating someone else's secretions). Once the snails have been dipped into hot water, the seal can be scraped away with a sharp knife. If you prefer, this can be done at the stage where you check if they're alive; the snails will realise that they are being tampered with, and will start to produce their slime, which may put you off cooking them, so that you take them back to where you found them...

The snails are now ready to be cooked in the meal of your choice. In our house, we have them stewed in a traditional Cretan recipe.

TO PREPARE THE SNAILS FOR COOKING:
You need:
about 80 snails at the cleaned stage, enough to give 4-5 servings


Boil the snails in salted for about 20 minutes, changing the water, changing the water once or twice (depending on how off-putting you find the residue) to get rid of the slime. I love the sound of snail shells rattling against the pot. They will now smell like an unusual species of shellfish. They will have lost their green slimy look, and you will now view them as edible. Strain the cooked snails of excess water, and place them in a bowl, covering them in wine. This is simply to make them smell nice; wine is often used in Greek cuisine to marinate meat, hence its use with snails. Let the snails marinate for a couple of hours (or overnight, as this meal CAN be cooked piecemeal - as mine was) before you add them to the main stew.


For the stew, you need:
1/4 cup olive oil (from the village)
1 large onion sliced thinly (from our garden)
2 cloves of garlic, minced (from our garden)
10 small zucchinis (from our garden - the less mature, the better - the ones I used today were just sweating in their own juice and cooked in very little time)
20 baby potatoes (given to us by my uncles), or 4 large potatoes, chopped into large chunks - I used far more potatoes than necessary to cater for snail non-eaters
4-5 tomatoes, grated (from the garden)
salt, pepper and oregano (I have no idea where they were procured)
finely chopped parsley (optional)


Heat the oil and add the garlic and onion. Saute till transparent. Add the potatoes and zucchinis - chop the courgettes if they are large, otherwise, leave them whole, as they tend to break up if overcooked. Coat them in oil and let them sizzle in the pot for about five minutes to let them acquire that fried rather than boiled taste. Pour in the tomato and season the food. Cover the pot, turn down the heat to the lowest point, and let the vegetables simmer till they are almost cooked (about 20-30 minutes). Don't stir the vegetables in the pot; shake the pot if you want to move anything in it. Potatoes go mushy and zucchinis break up. When you uncover the pot, your kitchen will take on the smell of French ratatouille. Add the marinated snails, cover the pot again, and let the food cook for another 15-20 minutes. Sprinkle the parsley on top (if using).

As I have 'fussy eaters' in the house, I sometimes remove the vegetables if I think they're done to perfection, so that they don't get mushy or break up. The snails are left in till they are tender and have taken in the sauce. The vegetables are placed back into the pot simply so that they don't dry out. This is a very oily dish - not for serving to the Queen of England, although the queen downstairs took a liking to it.

TO SERVE THE SNAILS:

For each serving, place a few potatoes and a couple of zucchinis with a good ladle full of sauce, and top with at least 15 snails per serving.

TO EXTRACT THE SNAIL FROM THE SHELL:

This is the fun part. We don't use special cutlery as the French do, and our hands play as important a role as our forks. For high society, have some warm water in a bowl in the middle of the table for people to dip their hands in to wash off the oily sauce. Don't forget the towels - paper napkins simply stick onto your fingers, cause a great mess, and you need practically one per shell, especially if you're inexperienced. I envy my husband on this point: as you can see, he is so experienced, that he never gets his hands messy and uses his towel once he's finished eating his plate.

Pick up a snail. Slurp the sauce in it - it's divine. Insert your fork into the shell and attach it to the meat. Twist the fork using a light movement, and the snail will come out in one piece, complete with a little black bit, its pancreas (which you can choose to eat voluntarily; some people swear it's the best bit, while others say it can be poisonous). If the snail did not emerge whole, there's still some more left inside; don't let it go to waste. It is inaccessible form the shell opening. You need to crack the shell. Slurp on it one more time. Hold it in one hand, and crack the centre top with the side of your fork. When you have cracked it - it should crack easily - stick a tine of the fork into it. Twist the fork around, and you should see the rest of the meat coming out of the shell's opening: kou-kou-tsa! This procedure takes as much practice as it does for a non-Asian to use chopsticks. Just watch my daughter:


You'll be surprised at how much you enjoyed your meal. The stewed courgettes and potatoes are a feast on their own. The sauce acquires a smoky cinnamon taste when the snails are added; bring on the sourdough bread. A piece of feta wouldn't go amiss, either. And if you did enjoy the meal, there are a number of other ways that snails are eaten in Crete: my Cretan cookbooks mention the following recipes (Psilakis alone mentions 37 recipes!), all using the same basic principles at the harvesting and cleaning stage as the recipe you have just savoured from your computer:

• snails pilafi: sauteed snails cooked in a tomato sauce with rice added
  
• snails with wheat or xinohondro: cooked in a similar way to pilafi snails
  
• fried snails: marinated snails dredged in oil and fried - a great accompaniment to this would be skordalia (the Greek version of aioli) or tzatziki
  
• snail moussaka: using the shelled meat of snails instead of mince
• snails with greens: fresh sweet leafy greens are simmered in a light sauce with the snails
• snail pie: a mixture of vegetables with snails cooked as a self-crusting pie
  

Let's give Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall a hand for creating a recipe using snails, called Gardener's Revenge, for the UK TV series River Cottage. He doesn't mention how to clean, deslime or shell the buggers (he uses them shelled) , and he cooks them for about two minutes (as the recipe states). Unless English snails differ enormously from Greek snails, he has a lot to learn, I think.

This is my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging, hosted by its creator, Kalyn's Kitchen.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.

Snail harvesting (Κυνήγι χοχλιών - σαλιγκαριών)

Snails are a Cretan delicacy - they're not as popular in other parts of Greece as they are in Crete, and the snails sold in Athens are probably being brought by ex-patriate Cretans. Most people think of them as disgusting garden pests. But as soon as you call them 'escargots', all sorts of positive connotations spring to mind - 'chic' food, haute cuisine, exotic taste. If you just want to find out what they taste like, then all you need to do is boil up a dozen and season them. Just think of them as land shellfish, as Ric commented.

Once you've tried them, if you like them enough, you may want to harvest them - they make an interesting appetiser at a dinner party, individually served (5-10 per bowl) in olive oil, or as the French do their escargots, in garlic butter sauce. In my house, we cook them in a tomato-based stew. The only weird thing about the way the French cook them is that they remove them from their shells, and then refill them after marinating them in a sauce, a time-consuming, pointless process, since they will once again be removed to be consumed. The number of times they are handled by man must spoil their taste, not to mention their hygiene. Then again, special cutlery has been invented to extract the snail out of the shell; this is never used in Greece. We use our forks, and we're not averse to cracking the shell when things get tough, or slurping on it to get what we want!

Snails have been eaten for many centuries in Greece and other parts of Europe. The snails of the Old Countries are probably older relatives of the same ones as the snails found in the New World, originally stowing away on ships and exported produce, as Lulu mentioned (but then maybe not - see the comments section). It amazes me that the photograph of the common garden snail found in Wikipedia is exactly the same as the most common village snails we find in our village fields in Fournes.



We harvest snails in the spring (and sometimes in the summer, up to the end of July) from our orange groves. You have to know your area well enough to know where the snails hide. I've been doing this for about five years, so I have an idea where they keep home in Fournes. When it rains, snails 'walk around' in the damp foliage; they leave their territory and perambulate the area. Once the rainy damp period stops - here in Hania, this is usually end of May, early June at the latest - they hibernate; they are summer sleepers. In Crete, we say 'stoumbonoun' (they puff up and stay put). And I know just where they do that in the village.

On an early morning day in mid-May, the weather was very damp. We decided to forage for snails, but when we looked int heir usual place of residence, they weren't there. We hung around the fields doing other jobs, and as the day warmed up, the snails came back to their 'home'. When we ready to leave the field, we looked for them in the same places - under rocks that don't get a lot of sunlight, in the thickets of grassy bushes, dry spots under irrigation hoses, on the walls of old disused concrete irrigation canals - just waiting for us to come. If you collect them during the rain, as many villagers do here in Hania, you will practically be stepping on them! I've been advised to collect only large snails, as they are meatier, and small ones obviously haven't reached the stage of maturity that they need to be consumed. Their shell cracks more easily at th cooking stage if they are too young. There is another logic to this: leaving smaller ones in the field means that they will not become extinct or be depleted, and will continue to reproduce.

The snails were put into a container that allows them to breathe - a plastic vegetable basket is perfect for that, since it is easy to clean and can be securely fastened so that they don't escape. Wooden crates are said to be healthier; as long as you can clean them and keep them secure in one place, a plastic one with openings smaller than the snails themselves will do. The crate must be stored in a cool, dry place; snails don't like durect sunlight, nor do they like damp patches, despite their conspicuousness in such conditions.



As you find more snails, you can top up the container. Resting snails aren't disturbed by new additions to the cage. The only thing you have to remember is to clean out the cage. As Nancy points out, "as the snails eat, they excrete fluid, so they and the box need to be cleaned." The snails are fed in the container, to fatten up and rid themselves of possible toxins; Cretans toss a couple of handfuls of flour or a packet of spaghetti in the container (pasta is easier to handle than flour, which is why I use it). This food is similar to what humans eat, so the stomachs of the snails won't be filled with any grasses that may be toxic to man but not to snails. They walk around, eating, shitting and drifting off to sleep (the famous "mam, kaka, nani", as we say in Greece about babies). Once they stop feeding, 'stoumbonoun'; they seal up, creating a mesh around their opening.

Cleaning out the cage goes on for as long as you keep adding snails to the cage. During cleaning, you will also find some dead snails. Definitely remove those; it's really off-putting to find a dead one during the cooking stage. Watch out for snails stuck on the lid of the container! The last time you will clean the cage will be a few days after the last addition. When I did this, nearly all the pasta had disappeared, the snails were happily immobile, and the cage did not have an unpleasant odour, meaning that the snails were 'clean'.



You may be wondering how you can tell a live snail from a dead one. Common sense may tell you: there is no seal, the shell is empty, maybe there's a bad smell. The dead snails are also black and there is no slime. And when they're plunged in water, they will definitely not show any signs of movement - partially moving body, antenna coming out of the shell, an instinctive pull-back reaction upon being touched. I prod them to do this if I am really unsure. In any case, there will probably be no seal at the outer edge of the shell. If there is, remove it; chances are you will see a slimy grey slug who has just received a rude awakening!



We haven't eaten any of our harvested snails yet, because there is still so much fresh produce available (especially zucchini) that we are 'forgetting' to eat meat, and snails are a kind of meat, even if they are treated as lenten fare, like seafood. Before they are eaten, there's a whole process involved in cleaning them, and that's definitely another story, unless you're like my godson's father who doesn't believe in cleaning organically produced food; no thanks! But the snails we've harvested must be consumed by the end of September; once snails start mating, they apparently give off a bad smell. No wonder you find snails in the fruit and vegetable section of the supermarket; they are as seasonal as zucchini. In any case, the snails born in a cage will not be feeding on a natural snail diet, even if they were bred for consumption. If you really can't do without a snail feast in the winter, they can be frozen after being plunged into boiling water (to kill them) and drained, but that's a bit like raping the countryside and not leaving any for anyone else, isn't it? The snails will be there next year and the year after, if only we eat them seasonally and pick only what we will eat.

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Boiled snails (Χοχλιοί - σαλιγκάρια - βραστοί)

I'm a four-time godmother. My oldest godson is travelling with the Greek merchant navy while my youngest (who's taller than me) is preparing to go to high school next year. We visit his family quite often, as he also has younger brothers who my children can play with. His family represents the epitome of Cretan hospitality: you cannot visit them without being treated to a cooked meal. My father and his mother's mother were first cousins, which is how we met. We eventually realised that somewhere down the line of our ancestors, my mother was also related to his father: one of my great-great-greats was the sibling of one of his great-great-greats, but which great-great it was has now been lost in the passage of time. Don't think you can get away with not calling them up beforehand and arriving unexpected; while Niko orders the souvlakia, Nicky will start laying the table (my godson's name is Nikita, to add to the confusion). This is why we always call them up before we visit; if you have to eat, then you may as well eat healthy food.

Niko comes from Ramni, a remote mountain village in Apokoronas, the easternmost region of Hania. Very few people now live in Ramni; when he was young (he's my age), the village sustained a large primary school. Ramni is a picturesque village - if you like to look at bare mountains from the front yard of your house, that is. The sound of a car is rare; a baby's cries have not been heard for nearly a decade.

Niko is very proud of the fact that he left school at thirteen, and still managed to secure a teaching position (carpentry) in a state-run rehabilitation centre for disabled people, through his local parliamentary representative (the infamous Greek 'meson' can still work miracles - look at what lengths some people go to, to try to secure their future through it), as two of his brothers also did. In the winter, he wears a black shirt, symbolic of the Cretan farmer, matching his twirling moustache very well, while in the summer, he wears a sleeveless singlet. He claims he never feels the cold, and never gets sick. Niko loves to tell people about how he met Nicky:

"I visited a go-between in Akrotiri about a potential bride. But the go-between told me that the bride wasn't available because she had an older sister, and if I wanted, I could marry her instead. 'But her sister's very fat,' I complained to the go-between. 'She has to go first,' he answered. At that very moment, a girl was passing by outside the house with her mother. They were bringing the sheep into their pen for the night. I asked the go-between if she was available for marriage. He told me she was, and that's how I met my wife."

I'm still trying to work out what took me so long, given such a simple formula. Obviously, I was never around at the right time.



Snails are sold in Crete at the supermarket, in little net bags, in the same place where you would normally find fresh fruit and vegetables. There are also roadside dwellers selling them from the back of their pick-up trucks. Snails are a particularly Cretan affair, as Nancy points out, most other Greeks preferring to give them a miss. I prefer to think of them as land shellfish; we eat oysters and limpets, clams and scallops, so why not eat snails? Some edible varieties are also found in the sea. My mother used to collect snails from our garden in Wellington on a rainy day, of which there were many in WWW (wet and windy Wellington – and I do miss a good rain shower). The only difference between the Cretan and Wellingtonian snails was the size – Kiwi snails don’t need fattening up; they are ready on collection. The only reason they were placed in a potato sack to feed on flour and pasta is so they can empty their bowels, eating only foods known to be harmless to humans. I must admit that snails were the only food my mother cooked that I never ate. I now regret this immensely; here I am, living in the land where she was born, picking, storing and cooking snails for my husband.

In Crete, snail gathering takes place once the first spring rains start, after which the snails need to be confined in a well-aerated container to fatten up and 'seal': once they have had their fill, in combination with the hot weather, they find a comfortable position away from direct sunlight in a dry spot, and stick themselves onto a flat surface where they form some kind of web over their shell. They are edible at this stage, right until the middle of autumn. After that, they start moving around and mating, at which stage they shouldn't be eaten because they emit an unappetising aroma. I'm only telling you what I've been told, and I’ve only eaten them in their season.

When we visit my godson, 'hohlious' along with horta are always on the menu; Niko ensures that he's gathered them all before anyone else. He gets his wife to boil them up just after we arrive. I suppose he’s never heard about the parasite that snails may harbour, causing a rare form of meningitis if the snails are consumed undercooked. But then again, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet – Tamus creticus is supposedly poisonous, even though Cretans have been consuming it for centuries, while the berries of Solanum nigrum (stifno - black nightshade) are considered poisonous, even though the literature states that they are edible. Eek - I'll stick to what my ancestors have taught me.

The snails are placed in warm water to see if they open up and move around, which ascertains that they are alive. Then they are boiled (in their shell) in salted water, just enough to cover them, with an onion and a tomato chopped into the water. Once cooked, they are strained (they're still in their shell) and sprinkled with fresh rosemary. The meat is twisted out with a fork - if it doesn't come out entirely, the shell needs to be cracked on the top to make the rest of the body budge. There's a little black squiggly big at the end of a complete snail carcass, its pancreas; it's up to the eater if that bit is consumed. Nikos’ three sons slurp away happily on snails dipped in olive oil; my urbanite offspring are content with dipping a piece of bread. We also collect snails from the village; once fattened up, I cook them the way my gourmet husband prefers - but that's another story.

©All Rights Reserved/Organically cooked. No part of this blog may be reproduced and/or copied by any means without prior consent from Maria Verivaki.