noodlepie

Eat snails

The Carnivore Project asked me to nominate and then champion one kind of meat for an online meatdeathmatch.

"The tournament will be a series of one-on-one (meato-y-meato) match-ups. Each dish has a champion, who will talk about their meat and explain why it deserves to be the Ultimate Meat. The viewing public will then decide which dish is worthier, by means of a vote."

I chose snails because, as I will illustrate beyond any logical dispute, snails are the most widely available, flexible, delicious, healthy, inexpensive and 'real' foodstuff known to man.

Unlike virtually all of my Carnivore Project competitors; burgers, bacon, steaks, ribs, hot dogs, lamb, foie gras, chicken, buffalo wings, turkey, goose, duck, fish  etc. snails are real food. There's no cellophane and no price tag on a garden snail. You know exactly what you are eating, where it comes from and how it is killed. Collecting, preparing, cooking and eating snails is one of the only true, 'real' meat experiences open to people in the world with no recourse to guns, rods, knives or sticks.

Others may champion burgers (pahhh.... fatty growth hormones), bacon (chemically enhanced gunk) or sausage (literally bollocks), snails are all natural, nutritious and nearly always available - the three N's.

For some, the picture above supports the commonly held belief that snails present a number of technical challenges, both physical and psychological, for diners. But... well... get over it already. Snails are now widely available even in "Good food? Huh? What's that?" Britain, which was absolutely not the case 10 or 20 years ago. In short, snails don't need sexing up and they don't need your freaked out fears, they need your knives and forks.

The number of stomach screamingly classic snail dishes in the world is simply breathtaking. In France there are a great many exquisite snail dishes including the famous - and absolutely corkin' - Escargot de Bourgogne. In Britain - where every single native snail is edible - The Fat Duck has made snail porridge famous. In Vietnam, epicures adore snail noodle soup, snails in coconut, and stuffed steamed snails. From south east Nigeria we have Edikaikong soup - with the amazing giant African snail. And that's just your garden end of the snail spectrum.

The great many sea varieties are an altogether different kettle of snail. Live Bulot (think whelks) are like velvet when briefly boiled and dipped in Ãoli. Top UK chef Rick Stein recommends whelk fritters. The Italians love their Scungilli Marinara. In Ecuador Conch ceviche is a hit. While in Korea, a day out at the seaside is incomplete without a nibble on one or two of these. Snails, raw or cooked properly i.e. not overcooked, simply melt into your taste ducts.

Snail cuisine is globally diverse, although I'll concede this is not a unique2snails phenomenon. That said, they're cheap and/or free. You can find them easily in the garden or at the beach. They come in all sizes and offer a bewildering variety of taste experiences and can be cooked, as mentioned above, in an enormous number of ways.

Snails are also lean. They're virtually fat-free. In addition, they look ace. Discarded shells make fabulous toys for kids, ashtrays, ornaments, art etc. A prawn can't do that. And unless your Damien Hirst you'll have a herculaenly hard task making art out of a cow before washing up time. And anyway, when was the last time you saw an entire cow on sale in Sainsbury's? Snails are different. You buy a snail, or find a snail, and you get a snail. A real one. Whole.

But don't just take my word for it, tune in to bloggers-come-snail-hunter/gatherer/cookers,

"delectable! Not rubbery at all. Nor slimey.... Why pay the earth for a delicacy that is considered by most gardeners to be a pest! This is probably the most humane meat you will eat." Duo

"I’m proud of the fact that I’ve hunted, slain and cooked my own dinner." Blogjam

"They were just as delicious as could be... one taste of that buttery, garlicky goodness made this science experience rewarding, delicious and educational." Matt Bites

Voting should be up soon at The Carnivore Project. Vote snail. Vote often.

Snail trail

Meanwhile... back at Thanh Hai snail shop at 14/12 Ky Dong street in District 3, Saigon, les escargots are zapped out faster than Steve Austin on khat. Having previously done the bun oc - good to superb to how do they make this? I want to make it at home - I return for oc ham thuoc bac, or snails in Chinese medicine. Like bun oc, it's a northern dish - like everything else on Thanh Hai's menu for that matter - and one probably best enjoyed on the fragrant shores of Tay Ho, (West Lake) up the road in Hanoi. Oc ham thuoc bac arrives in a covered claypot with a side of sweet chilli sauce.

Whip off the lid and you're greeted by a hot fog of bitter sweet jujube, ginseng, roots, bark and ancient, revered Chinese mandarin fingernail scrapings. Thuoc bac is supposed to be good for all kinds of ailments. Although it appears to have a devastating effect on the written word.

It's a fantastic dish served in the chilly north. It needs a bit more work and imagination in the thermal underwear free south. The freshwater snails have a wee bit of that traditional Vietnamese chew factor. That's no bad thing though. I go French and scoop thuoc bac broth with empty snail shells and guzzle it down. It's bitter and I don't think it should really be ingested this way, but it's a decent sideshow to the blandness of the snailmeat and sweetheat from the red chill dish.

I'm a massive fan of snails done the French way and I've several soft spots for this northern Vietnamese take on the afterlife of gastropods. But, for my money - and at 15,000VD a dish that's admittedly very little money - I'd plump for the classic bun oc if you drop by Thanh Hai. More snail shots and here's the menu. Next visit, stuffed snails. Mmmm.

Technorati Tags: snails, Saigon, Vietnam, super smashing great

Tip off: Snail city

This is Quan Oc (Snail house) at 393 Tran Hung Dao street down a small alley in District 1. One reader emailed this spot in a while back. Soon after a couple of Saigonite friends pinpointed the same joint. Finally I'm here. It's famous in Saigon for snails, shellfish, crabs, shrimp, frogs and duck eggs. It's one of those restaurants that has built up a stonkin' good rep. over the years. So much so, the brightspark neighbours muscle in leechlike with an array of six or seven 393-wannabes all within shell throwing distance of Quan Oc's front door. 393 is still the most popular but, what with all the imposters, this grubby back passage is snailed out.

The restaurant is a classic of its ilk. It's a shitpit. I wonder whether the owners of joints like this ever look around and think, "You know, it's probably about time we gave this place a good lick of paint." It's not as if they're not raking in the shillings. They're busy, busy, busy. The three b's. Quan Oc serves from 1pm, but snails and shellfish are big evening Saigon grub scores. Arriving at 7pm, we're here relatively early.

There's a wee stoop level, multi burner kitchen at the back of the restaurant in front of which are buckets brimfull with shellfish, snails and molluscs. Outside there's a single grill - presumably to keep the smoke factor inside low. I think you'll agree the g'riller in the picture above has a lovely looking handful on display. Tasty.

A closer look (at the food) reveals a plate of scallops - So diep nuong. I saw other diners ordering these with cheese and quail eggs fried on top. However, our order goes the sate route. Look gorgeous, don't they? They're well, well firey and unfortunately the scallops are well, well over done. Very firmly attached to the shell meaning the meat has to be eaten in strands -- and that's never good. However, this dish was the only weak link in what turned out to be a decent delve into the extensive shellend of Quan Oc's menu.

I won't prattle, but the tamarind soaked numbers above - So long xao me - (sorry don't know the name of the shellfish in English) were a sweet, sour sensation. Definitely the highlight along with the Oc len xao dua (Snails cooked in coconut milk) which come in a thick creamy coconutmungus sauce. I've blogged this dish before, but I'll wager this joint does them better. The So huyet xao toi (Blood cockles fried with garlic) were a decent enough score, but a wee bit "So what". Again - I've blogged these elsewhere. Quan Oc's version comes with lovely lumps of deep-fried lardy pork crackling. I almost felt homesick. Crunch. Lastly there's a very pleasant Chem chep nuong ( a kinda clam/mussel wannabe grilled with peanuts).  That lot, plus a couple of beers, cokes etc. cost 129,000VD. Sod all really, all considered.

Hic. More photos plus directions. UPDATE: NoStar Where recommends another joint on the same row.

Noodles dressed up as noodles

This is Bun Ta - 'Everything is Bun' restaurant at 136 Nam Ky Khoi Nghia street in District 1. It's fairly new and I mentioned it pre-opening, but never got around to blogging it up. I went there for the first time four months ago during its opening week. What's unusual for such a swank 'n' chic, minimal 'n' groovy resto is the menu. It's predominantly filled with the signature dishes of the Saigon streets. Dishes I've never seen any chef jazz up any differently from the next stall. The chefs at Bun Ta adhere to that rule. What we've got here is streetfood on posh plates, at clean tables in snazzy surroundings - Nice idea - All the groovy, beautiful people born with a Motorola attached to their right ear are here. Yep - if you're Vietnamese and you eat at Bun Ta - you've made it.

The eating area is spick, span and spacious. And it's busy. On this visit, it was almost full by the time we'd finished. The subtitle to the restaurant name gives the menu away. We're in noodleland. Bun rieu, bun mam, canh bun, bun bo, bun moc etc.  Yup - everything really is bun. But is it fun?

Dodging the soup section for a minute we start with chao tom banh hoi - barbecued shrimp paste on sugarcane - served with some trippy colourfully tiedyed bun. It comes with slices of cucumber, starfruit and green banana and a nuoc mam - fish sauce - dip and rice paper to wrap. The chao tom are kinda small, but it looks fabulous and tastes great. The shrimp paste crumbles very easily off the cane into small chunks.  However, it does make for a light lunch and you may need another dish if you want to flex your belt to its more usual position. Next up is bun oc - snail noodle soup.

I've been holding off blogging about Bun Ta as I wanted to gauge this soup with another, more street, bun oc. The Bun Ta bun oc is good, it's very good. Packed with flavour, tofu, tomato, blood and snails. But is it that good? Well... no it's not. I am nitpicking here, but I have three problems with Bun Ta. Firstly, it serves a perfectly respectable soup in pleasant, comfortable, air-conditioned surroundings and you get to sit near lots of gorgeous, nouveau riche Saigonites. But... I'm more... you know... old school. Bit of grime, crusty chilli sauce bottles, flies buzzing around, rusty, dusty fan creaking overhead and soup that arrives with the waitresses thumb inserted in the broth. You won't find any of that at Bun Ta.

Secondly, there's the price. Am I really willing to spend nearly six times the regular price to pay for the surroundings in which I eat? Well. No. I'm not. But plenty of folk will. Saigonese are mad for flash and that's why I think Bun Ta might just do very well, thank you very much. "Give 'em what they like, but dress it up nice and charge them more" The last problem is the location, the owners chose a bitch of a spot. It's right next door to the exceedingly popular, very good, more reaosnably priced, more atmospheric and downhome Quan An Ngon restaurant. If I was in the area and it was a toss up between the two, downhome wins everytime. Lunch for two including drinks and a rice dish for the toad came to 247,250VD. Here are a few more snaps and here's the Bun Ta website. Final bonus link: another diner's point of view.

Tip off: Bun oc

Some nine months ago noodlepie reader Cainieu popped a comment through my door suggesting I swing by 14 or 16 Ky Dong Street in District 3. He (or she) said, "there you find the popular spot for Bun oc. I think it’s tastier than most Bun oc stalls around here in Saigon and it actually attracts loads of southerners apart from their regular northern customers. There are other dishes here like boiling snail and stir-fried snail with green bananas but I suggest you try the Bun rieu oc (that means snail soup with crab-paste)." I never forget a good tip and in a new series - called imaginatively enough Tip off - I'm here for lunch today. The alleyway above is at no. 14 and leads off Ky Dong street.

On the right of the alleyway entrance is a very popular noodle shop I spotted a few weeks back - must check that one out - but today I'm after Cainieu's snails and I walk down the alleyway, past a fine array of shabby lean to joints selling beef, pork and chicken noodle dishes, until I reach a righthand junction at a motorbike mechanic's shop. If you look at the top of the picture above you can just make out the Bun oc sign. We've had it once before elsewhere.

Down this small alleyway is a communal style courtyard with trees, concrete and quiet. Yes I know - quiet in Saigon. How odd. Good odd. I'd forgotten what it's like to sit in a bare bones resto and not suffer motorbike fumes, parping car horns, shouting, grime and crap. Within the courtyard there are no signs out front indicating Thanh Hai restaurant. From my limited experience, this is a very, very good sign. It means everyone i.e. local folk know where it is and what it serves. No need to show off with a big snazzy sign. A quick scan around tells me that it's probably the joint on the right hand side. I ask if this is the snail shack. It is. And we're in.

Mrs. Thanh Hai, who has been selling snails from here since moving to Saigon over twenty years ago, very kindly gives me a tour of her kitchen which is located at the rear of the small, eight tabled restaurant. She repeatedly apologises for the mess, the number of snails lying around in buckets, steamers and basins, the heaps of cleaned greens and the baskets of fresh noodles. Dunno what the hell she's on about - I think this is heaven, although the 40 odd snaps don't really convey that - sorry :)

First up is Oc xao chuoi xanh (Fried snails with green banana) It comes with a wooden stick and chilli/nuoc mam (fish sauce) dip. Scofftastically the freshwater snails - Oc gao - are not at all chewy and the green banana - chuoi xanh - is almost potato like in flavour and texture. The deal is sealed with a handful of a fried purple leaf called tiep to. It's simple. it's no bollocks fayre, unspiced and unrefined and it's bloody great. The texture combination of green nana and snail is unusual and supremely satisfying.

Next up is Bun oc rieu cua  (Freshwater snail/crab noodle soup). We've had several Bun rieu before, but never one quite like this. Take a look at the hedgerow for starters. It looks stunning with those green banana shavings... errr... shaved like that. Blimey. In among that lot are also beansprouts, more tiep to, hung cay (basil) and crunch--a-plenty rau muong (stripped morning glory). The broth comes from one of two large vats in the kitchen and is made predominantly, Mrs. Thanh Hai tells me, from freshwater crabs. She's long since ditched the ancient and secret family recipe handed down and carefully guarded through generations since the Tran dynasty in favour of the more well known Knorr family recipe. Tomatoes are added along with chopped spring onions, fresh vermicelli noodles, crabmeat and the snails.

Now sit back a minute and take a look at that soup.... It's fine, it's very fine stuff. And it's big, it's in a big bowl. It's a big soup. I know I'm going to like this, the place, the host, the soup, the look. After a while eating out in Saigon, you just know when something's right. Mrs. Thanh Hai, not surprsingly, tells me (I think) that she serves the best Bun oc in Saigon. As if to emphasise the point she says she's had customers from Germany and Sweden "and now you"... from Britain. We get bloody everywhere us heathens. I've only tried three or four Bun oc in Saigon and this is up there, it's very up there... No strong flavour, no southern sweetness either, just hearty, yet light, fresh scoff. It's formidable.

She also serves steamed snails among other snail-based dishes. I will be back and I will try everything on the menu and I will blog about it. Here is that menu and the business card. Without a blog and without readers like Cainieu it really doesn't matter if I lived in Saigon for donkeys and searched and searched I doubt I'd ever have found this joint single handed. So big up to Cainieu. Nice one. Keep 'em coming. Each dish costs 7,000VD making lunch, with a hand towel and a cuppa tea, an astonishing £0.54 in old money. More snaps.

Snail soup

Bo Ai at 19/12 Nguyen Thi Minh Khai street in District 1 specialises in two dishes. Bun oc Ha Noi and Banh da cua. Bun oc is a light Hanoian noodle soup with snails. I have no idea what Banh da cua is, although cua means crab and banh means some kind of cake, although Banh canh is a soup... Crabcakes/Crabcake soup? I'm not sure, and I'm here for the Bun oc anyhow, so let's not stress. Unlike the petite snails we scoffed on Tu xuong street these earthbound molluscs are massive.

We're here early and out on the pavement, restaurant front, snail-prep is underway. This chap takes a snail from a large box, slips off the 'hood' into the red basket, washes the snail in the blue basin, disposes of the snail crap in the yellow colander and puts the edible end of the escargot in the tall blue bucket. Colour co-ordinated escargot prep - how very cool. Below we have the freshly prepared snails. The snail killer did tell me the name of this snail, but I didn't have a pen to hand to note down the particulars and promptly forgot.

The restaurant is open to the street and is filled with the usual aluminium tables, TV and a beer and soft drink filled fridge. Below, the snail slayer's missus takes over in the skullery. She wears one plastic glove to handle the snails - which we previously saw on the pavement outside, handled by hubby sans plastique. The chef's plastic glove is relatively uncommon in Vietnam although I understand there has been pressure from the authorities to improve hygiene standards in these basic restaurants. Glass cabinets, refrigeration and gloves and part of the trend.

It's a mang di ve I'm after today (takeaway) As with other noodle soup takeaways it's thick with bun (vermicelli noodles). Thicker than if you had the sit down version. The snails err towards chewdom, but thankfully don't dwell too long there. There's plenty of them hidden under the noodles in the bowl below. The soup is a bit strange, slightly yellow in colour, but somewhat bland with no chili present. The dish comes with the usual shrubbery including a splodge of banana flowers.

It's a street soup, perhaps best served on the pavements of the chilly north. For myself, I have to say I wasn't too impressed. The Vietnamese have many ways of cooking snails and I hope I get to try a few more of them. However, I would be interested to know what goes into the soup as I couldn't find a recipe via Google. If you can help out, please post a comment. This mix of molluscs and noodles will set you back 8,000VD. View the business card.

Super snails

Tu Xuong Street in District 3 is a narrow strip often used during rush hour to avoid the clogged junctions of Saigon's over-motorbiked streets. I originally blogged this piece from Quan An Thien An, at 6A Tu Xuong for a Moveable Feast feature at The Food Section. Thien An is a half-covered, open air joint. The al fresco section has a retractable blue canopy. The kitchen area is hidden behind a flimsy partition and lines the entire length of one side of the restaurant. Plastic chairs, rickety fans, pot plants and naff paintings add bags more boom to the aesthetic bomb, but bad looks don't always mean shoddy nosh. Not in Vietnam.

There's an extensive, budget friendly English/Vietnamese menu with shrimp, crab, eel, frog, beef, squid and fish dishes. There are four house specialties; Chim se se nuong moi (Special plain grilled sparrows), Chao luon dua xanh (Eel green bean porridge), Chao ca rau dang (Fish porridge with rau dang) and Oc len xao dua (Braised "Len Len" snails with coconut milk). I have no idea what a "Len Len" snail is, but I do like my snails and so this is the dish I plump for. A bell rings and the food appears from a small serving hatch.

No less than six pairs of eyes bear down on me wondering whether the clueless white guy knows what to do next. He doesn't. I try, but without the usual 'snail-picking device' I'm floundering. One of my watchers takes pity and shows me the way. It turns out the trick is to suck both ends. The pointed tip of each snail is already broken off for you. You suck this end first to dislodge the snail. Follow this up with a hard suck on the wide end and the small rubbery gem should pop straight into your mouth. Simple. Well, not quite. It's messy, it's noisy and it's embarrassing to fluff your lines in front of an audience. However, it's worth the labour intensive scoff-out because this is an excellent snail dish.

The sweetened coconut milk is mixed with lemon grass, chopped Rau ram (a spicy Vietnamese mint-like herb) and a little chili. I'm a big snail fan, but let's face it - snails are bland. Fortunately, the sweet, hot coconut sauce at Thien An gives the grunt these snazzy mollusc wannabes need. It's a fabulous find and I'll definitely be back for more. 30,000VD. Previously: also blogged up the bittet at Thien An. View the business card.