Snail trail

There was a time when les escargots were indelibly associated with French restaurants in the Aussie suburbs. Just as indelible was the drenching in garlic they inevitably received. Now, though, this rustic classic has moved beyond cliche and, more importantly, beyond the can.

Cliff Wilson, at Glasshouse Gourmet Snails on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, is one of only a few growers of snails in Australia. He says the taste of the fresh product falls between a mussel and a scallop, but with an earthiness that lends itself to cooking with delicate partners such as white wine and fresh herbs.

Wilson and partner Mary Page (pictured) have been nurturing helix aspersa (brown garden snails) since 2008. Page was nursing and Wilson was retired when they moved there from elsewhere in Queensland. Wilson became interested in snail farming after watching a program on ABC TV's Landline about 12 years ago. They began with 80 snails in a polystyrene box on their verandah.

Mary Page and Cliff Wilson, of Glasshouse Gourmet Snails , with some of the live snails they breed on their property north of Brisbane.

On my visit, I find a well-kept tropical garden, lawns, trees and flowerbeds, and a hand-painted sign, Mary's & Cliff's Slow Food Farm. Below the house is an arched enclosure, like a flower-raising shelter, with trunk-shaped pens lining each screened side, and a central earthen path. The pens are wooden frames fitted with green shadecloth. Raised wooden planks on the floor allow air circulation, as does a large electric fan (temperatures must be below 40C). The snails cluster around the wooden framework and on the shadecloth walls of their pens. Pen lids are propped open, but few snails have ventured out.

A separate "free-range" enclosure has long swaths of green shadecloth hanging from the screened top like a series of jungle tents. Each tented area has raised wooden floor-mats and water bowls.

Another arched enclosure, like a bird aviary, is being prepared as a second free-range section. This one has high shadecloth sides and roofing, giving a clear view of surrounding trees and vines, with lots of green leafy plants (ones snails don't want to eat) around a cleanly mulched floor (mulching encourages worms, which keep waste under control).

From that polystyrene box, "with the latest influx of new hatchlings, we would be holding around 200,000", Page says.

A local choko farm was an early source of livestock. ("They never used anything to control the snails, and we collected them," Wilson says.) It was a good indication of the snails' preferred menu. They eat grain every day and a varied supplementary diet.

"Two to three times a week we give them cut-up pumpkin and carrots," Page says. "Sometimes cabbage, but they prefer pumpkin and choko (both grown on the farm). They also eat vitamised greens mixed with corn, sunflowers and "chook food" with added lime.

"They won't eat it if it's not good food. Slugs eat rubbish, but snails won't."

Wilson says the ancient Greeks used to feed them on grain boiled in wine, a reminder that people have been eating snails for millennia.

Here in the Glasshouse Mountains, with no dramatic seasons, the snails don't hibernate, as they do in Europe and in southern NSW and Victoria when temperatures drop below 15C.

Reproduction is fast and furious and the survival rate is high. In the wild, under threat from snakes, birds and lizards, it drops to about 50 per cent.

Though the snails take a couple of years to mature, they are hermaphrodites and fertilise each other when they mate. Burrowing into the ground, both snails inject fertilised eggs into the soil, which emerge as tiny perfectly formed snails.

Storybook cute as they are, snails also make good eating. They're low in fat but high in protein, as well as fatty acids (largely unsaturated), minerals, vitamins and amino acids. They are ready at a minimum 8 grams, each individually weighed, at which point their food is withheld completely for five days for purging to take place. Then they're washed and bagged.

By the end of 2011, Glasshouse Gourmet Snails was packing 72 dozen snails a month. It's a local industry, with all sales in Queensland, to restaurants such as the Long Apron and Flame Hill in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, Restaurant II in Brisbane and a local cooking school, On the Ridge.

Cameron Matthews, executive chef at the Long Apron at nearby Spicers Clovelly Estate, has featured the snails regularly on his menu for the past two years. He prefers inventive, contemporary interpretations, such as garlic butter-poached Mooloolaba prawns with snail kiev, glazed glasshouse snails, nasturtium risotto and carrots from the garden; glazed glasshouse snails with fennel mousse, porcini, liquorice, eucalyptus and wild herbs; and Dill-oil poached John Dory fillet with a risotto of cos lettuce, braised snails and horseradish.

Some chefs stick to tradition. Snails with garlic butter are permanently on the menu at the famous bistro France-Soir in Melbourne's South Yarra. The Little Snail, at Sydney's Darling Harbour, lists escargot de bourgogne ("snails marinated in herb-infused court-bouillon, oven baked in garlic butter") and Brisbane's Montrachet brasserie serves escargots en cocotte ("snails baked in little pots with garlic butter, tomato, spinach and topped with puff pastry lids").

The commercial grower Snails Bon Appetite began in the NSW Hunter Valley in 2000. Owner Helen Dyball says she and husband Robert sell 2000 snails a week during the season (spring until about Easter). But she says it took them "six years of trial and error" and they eventually sought advice from a snail farmer in England. Now they have networks of distributors and external growers, among them businesses such as chicken farms. The Dyballs breed the snails and ship them to growers, who ship them back when they're ready for processing.

Snails Bon Appetite sells around the country and has stimulated a healthy heliculture business in its region. Snails appear on local menus and featured in chef Matt Dillow's dishes at the Verandah Restaurant as part of the 2012 Hunter Valley Food and Wine Month last June.

Source: The Australian, 12 January 2013