Snail & Spinach Quiche (South Africa)

I think this is one of the recipes that most people would think a challenge for me. However, I actually don't mind snails. I've had them before in restaurants and formed the opinion that they basically just taste like whatever they're cooked in.  Looking at this recipe, we decided to make it in France, although the recipe calls for tinned snails. These were surprisingly hard to find in France.  We saw lots of packs of snails in their shells but no tinned snails.  Eventually, after our third mission looking for them, my sister-in-law spotted a tin of snails cooked in a red sauce.  Deciding that this was likely the best I would do, I bought these and rinsed the sauce off. 

The kitchen all set up ready to
get to work

Along with the snails, Soph was not looking forward to this recipe at all because she hates quiche.  I, on the other hand, love quiche. I've made plenty of quiches in the past but none like this, so I was rather looking forward to giving it a go.  

Usually, I make quiche with puff pastry, since this is how it was made by the French family I lived with in Montpellier, but the pastry for this dish was different.  It was not hard to knock up but the fiddly part came after it had rested in the freezer.  Allegra recommends  grating it and pressing the grated pastry into the quiche dish.  I didn't really see the point of this but I did it anyway, just to see what the difference was. 

Once the dish was greased and the pastry case was in the oven browning, it was time to make the filling.  The snails, garlic and spinach smelled amazing with the cheese.  

As it turned out, the tart tin I used was a little small because I couldn't fit all of the filling in. But I just cut down on the filling and egg and back into the oven it went. 


When it was cooked it looked and smelled delicious.  

Unfortunately, it did not taste delicious.  It was a very odd dish actually.  None of us particularlly liked it. I would say that the filling would probably be better as a pasty. I think it took up too much room in the quiche dish and it led to more of a layered effect than quiches are meant to have, in my opinion.  I much prefer quiches done in the Laurainne style since their ingredients tend to float up more and mix with the egg better.  

A bonus to this dish though was that I learned a new pastry recipe.  It was great! It's a little awkward grating it though so I would probably roll it next time, which Allegra says works as well. It had a light and soft texture but not as flaky as puff pastry so it doesn't dry out as much. 

As a recipe I'd say it was a part win - at least we got a new pastry recipe out of it.