Escargot Melba - Escargot with Garlic, Chilli & Sour Cream on Melba Toast
Author: Whats4Chow
Recipe type: Starter / Appetizer
Cuisine: French
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4
One of my favorite ingredients are snails, however every restaurant seems to the same boring renditions over and over. This recipe gives a new flavor, texture and presentation to what has become an otherwise boring and mundane dish.
Ingredients
- 24 Escargot
- 30g Butter
- 5ml Granulated garlic
- 2.5ml Chilli flakes
- 60ml Sour cream
- Salt & Pepper to taste
- 4 Slices square loaf white bread
Instructions
- To start, we need to make the curly melba triangles. For this you need regular square loaf white bread.
- Working with 2 slices at a time, toast the slices in your toaster until they are well browned, then slice of the edges. Keep the edges on one side.
- Use your bread knife to cut the 2 crispy sides apart. The center is very soft and the knife will literally slide through.
- Turn each piece over and rub the inside surface on the work surface. The moisture in the untoasted side will cause the excess bread to ball up and rub away onto the counter, leaving you with a beautifully thin wafer of toast.
- Cut the wafers from corner to corner to make the triangles.
- Repeat this until all of the slices are processed.
- Place the melba triangles with the untoasted side facing upward onto a large baking sheet.
- Toast the melba in a preheated oven at 200c or 400f for about 90 seconds until the triangles have browned slightly and curled up.
- Clear the baking sheet and place any remaining triangles on the sheet along with the toast edges.
- Pop the sheet back in the oven for 90 seconds.
- Remove this from the oven and put the melba and bread batons aside.
- Now onto the snails.... remove the snails from the can and drain them in colander. Rinse the snails thoroughly under running water for 5 full minutes. This removes the terrible rancid brine from the snails.
- Measure out the dried chilli flakes, garlic granules, cultured sour cream and butter.
- Heat a pan over medium heat and add the butter.
- Once the butter is bubbling pour in the snails. Fry the snails gently for 2 minutes.
- Add the garlic granules and chilli flakes and continue to fry for a further 60 seconds.
- Turn off the gas or remove the pan from the heat and stir in the sour cream.
- To serve the escargot, place 3 triangles of melba on each serving plate.
- Top each of these with 2 snails.
- Dress each triangle with 2 toast batons and serve immediately.
