Snails with aioli

Thousands of kilos of snails are devoured in Mallorca on San Marcos' day (25th April). Many Mallorcans believe snails help avoid rheumatism and other diseases.

Pull up your chair, take a deep breath and prepare for one of the years great gastronomy experiences. There’s no easy way to eat these little morsels of deliciousness other than take up your tooth pick and gently tease them out of their shells and dunk them ceremoniously into the pure white aioli.

Not only do you have the snail to enjoy but also the wonderful broth that is infused with herbs and those two other wonderful Mallorcan products, sobrassada and botifarron. Take a slice of local bread and your spoon, and plough on through.

• 2kg of snails
• A bunch of herbs
(fennel, mint, celery, oregano, laurel and lemon balm)
• A piece of ham
• A piece of bacon
• A piece of sobrasada
• 1 or 2 botifarron

• 2 potatoes
• 2 onions
• 2 ripe tomatoes
• 1 chili pepper
• 1 tablespoon bread crumbs
• ½ cup of white wine
• Salt and pepper

1. Fill a pot with water and addd the clean snails. Bring to the boil and drain

2. Add the snails back to the pot and add water, salt, the herbs and a pinch of chilli. Bring them up to the boil and then simmer gently.

3. In another pan we can make the sauce by adding to olive oil oil sauté the bacon and sauté for 5 minutes. Then add the onion, grated tomato, ham, the botifarrón and the sobrassada. Add the white wine and leave to cook for 10-15 minutes. Season with salt.

4. Add the sauce to the pot of snails and allow the sauce to infuse the snails for 20 minutes before adding the potatoes. Bring back to the boil and simmer for 90 minutes. Just before turning off the heat add bread crumbs to thicken the broth.

Snails with aioli

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