I had originally wanted to make this fancy-yet-not-fancy meal using muffin tins and puff pastry, but the local Wal-mart, despite its awe-inspiring gamut of comestibles, doesn't stock any of the latter. So I had to make do with flaky muffins and panko.
The problem: what to do with my last can of snails?
The solution: do them up escargot-style!
I laid out the wet, doughy biscuits on a cookie tray and preheated the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. I looked for, and found, a shot glass, with which I punched out the centers of the eight biscuits, creating doughnuts and doughnut holes. I took four of the doughnut holes, ripped each hole in half, and pressed each half-hole into the bottom of a doughnut, thereby creating something that looked suspiciously like a backyard above-ground pool. I minced a handful of parsley, drained and chopped my canful of snails, and tossed the snails and parsley into a large bowl along with some garlic, a softened stick of butter, and a small amount of panko—just enough to get everything sticking to itself, like stuffing. With my bare hands, I mashed the escargot mixture together, then stuck a buttery glob into each of the eight biscuits. I sprinkled the tops with a mixture of panko, butter, and garlic powder, then stuck the whole thing in the oven. Seventeen minutes later, I was rewarded with this:
Yes, they smelled as good as they looked. Luckily, the biscuit dough, which was labeled "flaky," was as flaky as promised, almost equaling the phyllo-y texture of puff pastry. I spatula'ed two treats from the tray and placed them on a plate:
Delish. I ate three. Awesome late dinner.
I don't see why a snail-hater couldn't switch up the filling. The biscuits could just as easily have been filled with, say, a creamy mixture of ground beef and mushrooms, or some sort of sausage (I'd lean toward chorizo), or some other type of sea creature. (I'd be careful about shrimp, though; because the biscuits need seventeen minutes to cook, those shrimp might be as hard as pebbles if you put them in for the full cooking time. Might be better to cook the biscuits halfway, then add the shrimp, then cook the rest of the way.)
The above meal was easy and quick to make. All the ingredients, except perhaps for the expensive snails (six dingle-damn dollars a can!), were fairly low-rent. Not a bad way to serve your escargot.
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I've gone through all the back posts that I missed while I was gone, and I still find myself wondering... have you given up on the low-carb diet?
ReplyDeleteI admire your dedication and humbly thank you for your readership.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's true: I've been a bad boy since I got back. The mind rationalizes anything, and I think that, in this case, I've convinced myself that the low-carb thing wasn't that helpful given (1) my super-slow weight loss while on the diet, and (2) the fact that I stopped doing low-carb in Korea, and still didn't gain any weight. The lesson I learned in Korea was one I knew already: my body responds more quickly to exercise than it does to dieting. It's a poor rationale for not continuing low-carb, I realize, but there we are. I may restart the low-carb regime this week, though; I'm feeling these weird twinges of conscience. Call it Catholic guilt.
That looks seriously good. Absent 'scoggits, bay scallops would work just as well. Basically, you're creating a garlic butter conveyance device... what could be bad about that?
ReplyDeleteI see. I was just wondering, since you hadn't posted anything about it.
ReplyDeleteAny chance we will see the return of the low-carb diet in conjunction with exercise? That seems like a reasonable recipe for success to me.
C,
ReplyDeleteThere is a chance.