Pasta with snails

Here in France we eat snails. Not alive, but pre-cooked. You can buy them in jars and on a recent journey in the Creuse I had bought one from a local producer.

The jar sat in the fridge for several weeks and I needed to come up with a plan to use them.

The classic way to eat snails is to cook them and put them back in their shells with a garlic-and-parsley butter. I did not want to use butter, as it is fat, and did not have shells.

I decided to buy “shell” pasta, multi-coloured, and make a sauce of garlic and parsley. I cooked the pasta in a large quantity of salted water.

I opened the jar and drained the snails.

I washed half a bunch of fresh parsley and cut the leaves. Then I put it in the plunger mixer with some water (white wine would also have worked) and juiced it. I cut four cloves of garlic and put it with some olive oil in a skillet on high heat.

After a while I added the snails and tossed and cooked for a few minutes, then I added the sauce.

I drained the cooked pasta and poured the snails over it.