The Elephant to Hollywood - Michael Caine [146]
The first aversion I had to deal with was the habit of putting olive oil on your food. I first came across it on location in Portugal for A Hill in Korea and I thought it was just plain disgusting. My mother always used it for cleaning the wax out of our ears and that, I believed was its sole purpose. Why on earth would you want to put it on your food and eat it? Another thing was blue cheese. In the army I slept in a room with twenty guys and we all had almost permanent athlete’s foot. Because we were all infantrymen we walked about a lot and the cure for athlete’s foot was a blue paint – so we all walked around with blue feet. Whenever I used to see or smell blue cheese, I was taken right back to the army and I didn’t want to be reminded of it! In my early days, that mild cream cheese known as ‘La Vache qui rit’ which is packaged in those little silver triangles, was as far as I’d go in the continental cheese line. My third aversion also stemmed from my days in the army but had its origins in a much more frightening encounter than the blue cheese. The sudden smell of garlic on the night air implied that Chinese soldiers were close by and for years the smell made me feel sick. I’m well over this one, too – although I still don’t like snails in garlic. And then there was the word ‘California’. It’s now one of my favourite places in the world, but when I was a little boy any mention of ‘California’ struck terror in my heart . . . My mother used to dose me up with California Syrup of Figs and I would then have to spend a very unpleasant day dashing down the three flights of stairs from our flat out to the toilet in the back yard . . .
Speaking of snails, I have a big problem with them in my garden and I think the French are to blame. I know you might think that the French eat millions of snails each year so how could they be exacerbating my snail problem? It’s because the French eat thrushes, and thrushes eat snails. Now, the French eat a lot of things that I wouldn’t – frogs’ legs, for example – but the frog question does not affect my garden, and the lack of thrushes does. There are fewer and fewer thrushes in my garden each year and more and more snails, so if you want to eat snails, please do so with my blessing – I’m even giving you a very good recipe to encourage you – but please tell your French friends to leave the thrushes alone!
Snails in garlic butter
You can eat common or garden snails, and very good they are too, as Gordon Ramsay demonstrated on The F Word. You do need to know what you’re doing when it comes to preparation, though. Collect your snails (allow about eight large ones per person) and rinse them thoroughly under running water. Now you need to put them on a 48-hour fasting programme so they shed their toxins. Keep them in a large jar with some holes for breathing, in the lid, or a small cage from which they cannot escape. At the end of the process, rinse them again. Just make sure you don’t cook a dead snail – they should retract into their shells when poked. There’s no need to salt them or remove any part of their bodies. You can place their jar in the fridge for 24 hours before you cook them. The cold will send them to sleep. Boil the snails vigorously for three minutes, then drain and rinse in cold water with a splash of vinegar. Repeat this rinsing twice more. Then simmer the snails in water with some herbs (a bay leaf and some fresh thyme is perfect) for thirty minutes, drain and remove the snails gently from their shells using a pair of tweezers. If you are planning to use the shells, as per the classic recipe, you need to boil them in a large pan of water with two tablespoons of baking soda for an hour and then allow to dry thoroughly.