Gourmet products local specialties and wines Saint-Jean-De-Boiseau

Manuel has been a heliculturist for several years. Far from being a vocation or a childhood dream, he was a photographer by training, but he left his job to travel the world. And it is in Asia that he had the idea of heliciculture, in Hong Kong. He then had the desire to open a restaurant abroad by highlighting a typical product of French gastronomy. He then discovered snail farming from a distance and became interested in the subject. Back in France, he followed a training course in snail farming, then another one to set up his own business and went in search of a plot of land to start his breeding. Today, Manuel raises between 150,000 and 200,000 small horned animals. The first adult snails are released into the park in mid-April and early June, and are then put into hibernation at a temperature of between 4 and 6°C, as they would be in the wild, and kept in cold storage for several months. Manuel operates on a fresh basis, cooking his snails every week. The flesh is washed with coarse salt before being cooked in a court-bouillon. Of course, he offers the inevitable and traditional snails with parsleyed butter, either in their shells or in croquilles, a salty biscuit. Other recipes include snails with sun-dried tomatoes and basil, with Roquefort cheese or with pumpkin. For the more reluctant, there is also the escargotine: a recipe for parsley butter with mixed flesh to be spread and baked.