Cooking snails, Escargot?

yes, same snail found in the garden. you are talking about the brown and yellow striped ones? yup. in san francisco, they are common everywhere.

just that if you harvest them from your garden, make sure to keep them in a box with some water, lettuce and/or corn meal for two weeks so that any dirt they have inside is purged from their system.

You have to have special snails to make a proper Escargot; I actually found a Huge Escargot snail in the Long Island Sound the other day, but that's rare....get the canned ones from the store...and the shells and plenty of garlic, butter, flat leaf parsley and go for it! Mix minced garlic(I'd say at least 5 cloves for 12 snails, 1/4 pound of butter and handful of parsley, mix and chill; rinse snails, and shells, put the oven on 450 degrees, scoop some garlic/butter mix into shell 1st, then push the escargot in; pop into the oven for about 20 minutes until sizzling, but not burnt!

Four cheese, four mushroom, Escargot Pizza. Cook the escargot till almost crunchy in garlic and butter. Cook the mushrooms in the snail butter. Grease the pizza pan with the snail butter. Spread the dough, top with pizza sauce, add grated cheeses (your choice) top with mushrooms, escargot and bake until perfect. Open some good red wine and enjoy.

Please tell me you didn't actually try to cook a garden snail....

Anyway,

Which species ? : Helix aspersa aspersa, the Petit-Gris or Helix aspersa maxima, the Gros-Gris should be the easiest to find in North America.

There are a lot of recipes and not all of them French. In the Philippines, we usually cook them in coconut milk.

Try this site to get some ideas about preparating and cooking snails.

http://escargot.free.fr/eng/cooking.htm

It includes tips about preparation too and includes a workable recipe for the traditional "Escargots à la bourguignonne"

No. Definitely not a common garden snail. I believe these snails are "farmed" and perhaps come from Europe.

Yuk!