Food You Can Eat: Chanterelles et Escargots en Crôute a l’Alsace

When cheese and crackers are just NOT ENOUGH

Tiny, awkwardly sized, not very helpful image via epicurious.com

Yes, I have lost my mind, but I lost it long ago and I’ve looked everywhere. Translated, this means “Chanterelles and Snails in Puff Pastry Alsatian Style.” This is an old Epicurious recipe that I’ve adapted slightly and made three or four times just for the novelty of it, and to impress my foodiest of foodie friends. This makes 4 appetizers. It is, like most of the things I post to FYCE, deceptively simple and requires little technique.

4 ramekins. If you don’t have ramekins and you have people over a lot buy some. They’re not expensive and they’re really handy to serve alongside someone’s individual plate with butter, maybe, or a dipping sauce, or some kind of a paste or spread that people can help themselves to according to their own individual tastes. They come in different sizes but they resemble ceramic measuring cups without the handles.

Some butter to butter the inside of the ramekins, but not too much

1 large sheet of puff pastry dough, thawed*

4 tbsp. butter, divided (1/2 stick)

1/2 shallot, minced

Snails from a can or a tin.** I buy a can that contains 40, which is about right.***

4 tsp. dry Riesling to deglaze the pan. Here again I disagree. Riesling is Alsatian and though I am a big fan of all things Deutsch (Alsace keeps moving between France and Germany and Riesling is both Alsatian and German) I despise all Riesling and rarely have it in the house. Use a dry white wine, or something non-alcoholic you’re used to using to deglaze a pan.

1/2 (1 or 2 if you’re me) clove garlic, minced

A little minced parsley. I am usually not a fan of parsley but here I use it.

1/4 cup cilantro, shredded I am just kidding. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a recipe that was around before, say, 2005 that ever called for cilantro.

1/4 cup heavy cream, which is optional, but guess what I do? I USE IT.

*Or make your own puff pastry but I am hopeless with homemade dough of any kind.

** The more traditional way to make snails is to buy live ones. You poke them and see if they move. If they don’t you discard. In the course of making a filling with garlic and butter and herbs you kill the snails and then stuff the filling back into the shells and eat from them. I’m sure the French have been doing this since before the Norman Conquest. Julia Child has at least one recipe for this. Trust me, in this case canned snails are the way to go.

*** You might be wondering what the snails will taste like, if you haven’t had them before. In this recipe they don’t taste like much of anything. A little briny, maybe, but it seems like they’re mostly in there for mouth feel, and to impress upon your friends that you have made, just for them, Chanterelles et Escargots en Crôute a l’Alsace.

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This is very easy, I assure you. In a frying pan/skillet over medium heat melt the first 2 tbsp. butter and add the shallot. Then add the snails and cook for a little bit but not much, you don’t want to “color” them (they should look about the same as when you put them in). Move the contents to a bowl and deglaze the pan with the wine or what have you. Add two more tbsp. butter and the mushrooms to the frying pan/skillet. Cook these for a little bit until they soften. Add the snails from the bowl, then add the garlic. Cook for maybe 3—4 minutes. Add the cream if using and stir. Add the parsley. Take this off the heat. This is your filling.

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Spoon the mixture into the 4 buttered ramekins. Ideally what you’ve made will fill them, or fill them mostly.

Roll out that thawed pastry sheet. Look at your ramekins, or better yet hold one over, but do not press into, the pastry sheet. Find something, like an oversize coffee mug (this is what I use) that will create a circle that will be at least one inch wider all around than the ramekin. Press that mug into the pastry sheet to create 4 pastry circles. Drape each circle over each filled ramekin. Make a slit at the top to let heat/steam escape.

This is my favorite part. You should have leftover puff pastry dough. Use this to make little decorations if you want, but don’t cover the slit. If you do this brush a little more cream over the top so your artistic creativity doesn’t burn to a crisp.

Put the 4 ramekins on a baking sheet and place in the oven for 15—20 minutes (15 for me) “until puff pastry is golden brown but not burnt – keep a sharp eye on it.” A sharp eye, yes, always necessary when oven baking like this.

These are going to be really hot so serve these on small plates that can take the heat. Warn your guests (or not, if you don’t really like them) to cut into this Alsatian appetizer but leave them alone for a little bit so more of the heat escapes. If your friends are pretentious food snobs like mine they’ll know to do this instinctively.

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24 Comments

  1. Yes, it is me again. There should be a sub-category within FYCE that covers “Performative Revenge Cooking.” That’s what this recipe is, for me. I did grow up middle class (if that) in a Levittown-style ranch house in a dreary suburb, and I’ve never made nearly as much as Better Half has pulled in. When I make something like this for my friends, some of whom I’ve known for almost 40 years now, they don’t comment and are a little surprised that I know what this is. However, I have inherited, in a way, some of Better Half’s friends, who are aspirational try-hards.

    “Mattie, you’re cooking! What are we having? A can of baked beans? Ha ha ha!”

    “You are so funny, X. Tell me again which lower-middle-class New Jersey suburb you grew up in? It was near Philadelphia, wasn’t it?”

    “Mattie–“

    “Get them away from me, they’re all alcoholics in denial so make drinks for them. The food will come out in a while.” 

    • That description is great, super condensed evocative stuff.
       
      I’d say it’s like a lot of modern short stories, except they tend to chase after other extremes of the class divide and don’t hit this particular place, unfortunately.

      • I’m really not a class-conscious person, I takes ’em as I sees ’em. Except when it’s thrown up in my face, as with some of Better Half’s try-hards. “Do you like this shirt? It’s Gucci, from the Fall collection.” “It’s…no, it’s very ugly but as a mini-dress on a beautiful woman it would be fantastic. Do you like this shirt? It’s a polo from Banana Republic that I got on sale 10 years ago for $9.99!”

        “Mattie–“

        “Why don’t you fix X a drink, or another drink it seems like, and settle into the living room?”

        • The layers in that kind of stuff can be maddening, and the challenge is that people who lay down their cards like that tend to be lacking in self awareness, and are often so thin skinned.
           
          What can you do when someone treats you like you don’t know who Dorothy Parker was, and then takes offense when you talk about being where she was buried? Are they mad that you weren’t who they wanted you to be, or that you know they aren’t who they think they are?

          • I think with these folks they’re mostly pissed off because I am who I am, with very few pretensions, and this kind of gives the game away. Plus if Better Half were a swinging single and not tied down to me he’d be a much more desirable person, in their eyes. 

            I once had a group of these try-hards over for dinner and one of the most odious was seated to my right. I don’t tell everyone to do this but when you’re seated you should alternate speaking with the person on your right first, and then the one to the left. Our dining room table is pretty small so everyone usually ends up screaming at each other. 

            The Odious One was really getting on my nerves and was talking about so-called “family history” that I knew wasn’t true, so to him, he being to my right, I said in a reasonable voice, “You once drunkenly told me that your mother used to mop the floors in the Gdansk shipyards. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. It is from there that the Fall of the Iron Curtain began. But your mother would have missed out, wouldn’t she have, since she settled in Brighton Beach and there met your father. I’m sorry if I’m getting this wrong…”

            I am a total bitch when I want/need to be.

        • My dead, criminal, father and my idiot, criminal brother were/are both like this.  It was all about making sure they looked like they were loaded, when everyone knew they weren’t.  After my father died, one of my uncles by marriage told me the most hilariously stupid thing he used to do:  he would have a huge roll of cash in his pocket and would pull it out every once in a while.  Except that it was a roll of $1 bills wrapped in a single $20.  What an asshole.

          • Relatives by marriage are the best, aren’t they? My parents both were the first of their siblings to die, so that left the siblings but also their spouses. “Did you know that your mother…” “Your father once told me that he…”

        • No, he has not. But I’ve actually thought about this. He’s very bad at guessing ages and he’s used to people showing up from my distant past, so we all went to college together. You don’t even have to know or mention where I went to school. I have invited you all over because you’ve all made a generous donation to the Alumni Fund. As a member of the fundraising group (a lie, but I was on that Board for three years, and I bet Better Half still thinks I’m involved with it somehow) this is my thank you to you, generous donors.

          Better yet, Better Half will resume his globe-trotting ways and he will be conveniently removed from the premises. Things looked very hopeful on that front but one of his forays just got canceled. It was domestic but a lot of the attendees from abroad couldn’t accept our Covid-related restrictions so with prospective attendance low they canceled it. He’s scheduled to go to another thing abroad but that locale has become a Delta variant hot spot and he assumes his boss, the founder and CEO, is going to pull out.

          But we’ll see. 2022 is right around the corner. 

          • He’s very bad at guessing ages and he’s used to people showing up from my distant past, so we all went to college together.

            fuckin lol
             
            I doubt your “better half” is anywhere near as bad as I am at guessing ages, I think he’d likely be suspicious…  especially since from the way you describe things, it sounds like his job has a pretty social-skill aspect to it?
             
            (for anyone who has played D&D, my “dump stat” is CHA (and probably also DEX and WIS), and as bad as I am with social skills, I’d likely think something was maybe a bit off if someone tried to lump us all into the same general age group…)
            Also, I am never, ever, going to be mistaken for someone who “made a generous donation” to anything.
             
            Also, I’m weird and creeping, so just to assure people, I won’t be showing up, even if there is a general invitation.  I don’t go to any sort of social activity unless I am specifically invited by someone who personally knows how weird and creepy I am, and who has inviting privileges.  And maybe some public things.  sometimes.  (also, the weird-and-creepy thing would twig anyone’s suspicions… I’m one of those people who has often been accused of lying about mundane things for no other reason than “lochaber, you’re acting like a fucking liar, tell us the truth!”)

  2. I love the word “ramekins” & would love to call my significant other my “sweet ramekin” but sadly also love my men parts so will refrain.

    • I don’t really know why snails aren’t more common on American menus. They’re not that expensive to buy in cans in a supermarket, if you can find them, but the thing is a lot of times you can’t find them.

      The best thing about this recipe is that when you present it, if you can speak passable French, you can say, “I thought we’d start with chanterelles et escargot en crôute à l’Alsace…” 

      • Personally?
         
        I think it’s the “EEEEEWWWWW BUGS!!!” factor.
         
        Most Americans don’t seem to like the critters they perceive to be “slimy” (see also NON-slimy “slithery” things like Sneks–which soooo many folks *think* are “slimy!”) and which eat things like leaves in the garden…
         
        Also, there’s the “French Food!” factor–where so many of our fellow Americans never actually *watched* Julia, and think French foods are all just for “fancy-pants food snobs!” rather than a way of making damn-near anything into a tasty meal.
        Ngl, though, I’m FINE with folks being all “EWWWWWW!!!!” about the Escargot, Mussels, etc….
         
        Because then there’s more for us!😉😁🤗
         
        As for what they taste like–Mussels are somewhat the taste-embodiment of the color “green”
         
        To friends who haven’t had them yet, I tend to explain it as “they taste a bit like a combination of the smells of fresh-cut grass, and a good decaying-leaf-y humus… ‘Earthy’ and also a bit like the smell of a good walk in the woods”😉
         
        Escargots in garlic butter, with a good baguette to soak up all that tasty butter is heavenly–and that, with the Mussels in Cream Sauce (ask for an extra baguette, rather than going with the fries!😉💖), makes a *perfect* weekend-evening meal, if you can find a companion who’s got an adventurous palate!😉😁🤗

  3. I don’t like snails or mushrooms, but I will comment that I tend to really like rieslings, which for some reason seems to be an unpopular opinion. They tend to be really fruity, and I guess it’s weird because I tend to like the opposite in reds. 

      • My antipathy toward Rieslings has many origins. One of the most recent is that Better Half has a couple of friends (more try-hards) who don’t really drink. This is fine, they don’t, they don’t have a problem with alcohol, they just don’t like it. But when we host them (they live in another state) they like to pretend that they drink and bring a bottle of very sweet, fruity Riesling with them. 

        “Are you sure that you want to drink this? I’m making some meat-based carpaccio as a little appetizer and Better Half and I are going to have some of this Burgundy–“

        “Oh no, we love [brand of Riesling that a dollar store would sell, if they were allowed to sell wine.]”

        “Yeah. We also have water. Still or sparkling?”

  4. there’s a lot of decent sized land snails around here in the SF Bay Area.  I don’t know how accurate it is, but I’ve heard a couple different times that people claim they are one of the varieties used for escargot, and were intentionally introduced here.
    The other thing about eating wild snails is to make sure they are fully cooked, as snails are a pretty common parasite vector.  I imagine with farmed(?) snails, this may be less of an issue…

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