Slowly but inexorably, le snails (or rather snails) are conquering more and more admirers. In the last decades, from Piedmont to Sicily, they have grown farms and therefore production increased (+ 452% in 10 years), but also i internal consumption. If in years Seventy in Italy they ate it 4,700 tons averages a year, today we arrived at 44,000 tons. In practice we buy just over 10% of all snails sold in the world. And Italian production is not behind the question, so much so that in 60% of the cases it is about snailsimport.
Mad Italians for snails
There are many behind the all-Italian snail boom factors: the passion of gourmets for these clams, their gastronomic enhancement (breeders also propose them in sauces, pates and other processed recipes, and there are even those who sell their eggs like snail caviar) and the great demand of theirs slime as an "ingredient" of anti-inflammatory drugs and cosmetics wrinkle more fashionable.
A fine food
Nothing new under the sun, since these clams they have been part of Italian cuisine since the time of ancient Romans. Considered for centuries one delight for connoisseurs, the snails have accompanied the history of Italy, because these molluscs gastropods they have always been one of the most animals available in nature, more nutritious and, obviously, more easy to be captured. This is why they represent a food nutritious and tasty, very consumed especially in the areas mountainous and poorer. Today the science validate the value nutritive intuited by our great-grandparents: the meat of snail, in fact, is rich in protein (13.6%), which are of great quality because they are rich in essential amino acids. It Contains few fats (1.7%), many minerals (like magnesium and phosphorus) and different vitamins, in particular the B12.
A made in Italy that pleases
Italian helicopters make school in world. Our model of breeding snails they are fed with products vegetable, without the feed used elsewhere, and this makes them a product "made in Italy" very appreciated everywhere. Helix aspersa Muller is Helix aspersa Maxima (larger): these are the two species of typical area snails Mediterranean, the most appreciated in table for tender and tasty meat and, therefore, the most bred. In Sicily, a company breeds it biological a new species, the Helix aspersa Muller Madonita, obtained from the intersection of indigenous snails Sicilian and snails French breeding, and whose eggs, small, white and spherical, are sold as "Snail caviar". Also for the slime of snail are opening new horizons in kitchen: after cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and homeopathy, even companies food they are discovering this by-product, which has not only properties inflammatory but it also acts like emulsifier and stabilizer. For example, the Carpigiani Gelato University he experimented with it in the preparation of a strawberry sorbet, obtaining a result amazing.
A discovery in the kitchen
Italian cuisine is rich in local dishes of snails, so much so that almost every region has its own recipe: to piedmontese (with butter and onion), to Lombard (with parsley), to Venetian (with garlic), to ligurian (with oregano and rosemary), to Roman (with anchovies), to bell (with garlic and hot pepper), to Calabrian (with peeled and hot pepper), to Sicilian (with lemon and bay leaf). This variety of preparation is explained by the flavor delicate of these meats to keep, which make them suitable for to get married cash ingredients different. Traditionally seasoned with butter, parsley and garlic, snail meat can also be cooked in wet or in Tempura. With snails you can also prepare exquisite soups, even better if enriched with mushrooms porcini, and a succulent stew with tomato sauce, to flavor with potatoes, bacon and spices spicy at will. Many recipes, inviting and unusual, they have developed them Laura is Claudia, the two young women who founded a kennel near Lodi and that they regularly submit them on their company's blog At the Chiar of Luma. If you're looking for a gem from masterchef try the snail eggs, to combine with crudités of fish and of vegetables, beef tartare, black rice and raw red prawns, with dark chocolate or as a decoration for dishes really theatrical.
Manuela Soressi
December 2018
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