When it rains all the local bars have Caracoles on the menu, or is it just where I live?

They Seem to eat more of them than fish around here, my neighbor called me in so excited one day, she had a large crate full of them.

Lot of work for not much meat IMO

Oh I don't know, she often collects them from my garden.

I always say ""remind me not to accept any stew from her after that as she has a habit of bringing me allsorts, lol

Well, now you dont have to eat them to get the goodness......there are face creams advertised which are made from the "baba" of the snails.....

Crunchy stew?

I had a caracoles paella at the weekend with a few scraps of paloma thrown in for good measure. Very enterprising guy my neighbour,when he's not collecting snails, he's popping of pigeons with his air rifle.
Just as well the rice was very filling.
I'd probably die of starvation if I had to rely on wheedling them snotty little snails out of their houses.

Breast of pigeon pan fried with roquefort sauce..... mmmmm.

Beats snails any day.

Is it the same up your way? Down here they hate anything spicy, but they actually cook snails with chilli!

Yeh, nothing too spicy around here, generally quite bland.
The snails are usually in garlic. Seem a bit tasteless to me, and in view of what little picking there is on them, it's hard to justify all the bother preparing them.
Used to get some lovely spiced up dishes in Venezualan restaurants in the W.Canaries, but never yet found anything like them on the Peninsula.

The British went to India, brought back spicy food and went mad for it.

The Spanish went to America, brought back chillis and never used them except to cook snails.

Go figure.

The British have been bringing back spices from India for a very long time yet it's only comparitively recently that it's fully caught on with the general public.
Maybe it will take even longer for the Spanish to move on from their traditional bland food, but no doubt they'll get there eventually.

As you say, spices have been in UK for centuries, I think the reason the working man was slow to catch on was because they were way out of his price range, it was a luxury product initially. Our Spanish friends still turn their noses up if I mention a Chinese or an Indian meal, but because I made the right noises when they served us migas (how bland is that!) they keep doing them for us! Talking of expensive spices, I was reading that Spain produces 1.500 kilos of saffron, and exports 190,000 kilos of prime Spanish azafrán! Seems they are buying in cheap Indian, Iranian shit saffron and passing it off as top quality Spanish. Seems also that some of those lovely Cantabrian anchoas never swam in those seas, and all manner of veg, asparagus, peppers are bought in and labelled as Spanish products.
http://blogs.cadenaser.com/ser-consu...en-el-azafran/

We are such a clever lot......

The Spice trade was thriving for nearly a thousand years before the British Empire ever thought about going and getting what they wanted... How do you think the Arabs Traders got so wealthy? Elizabeth I was very keen on cinnamon and pepper was worth 10 times more than gold. America was only discovered because of the iron grip the Arab Traders had over the Spice Trade... Imagine British Cuisine without pepper.

This was watchable the other night.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00yrvhj

Yes, and the food inspectors even learnt that trick from Nelson of turning a blind eye!