Monday, September 24, 2007
A dish of snails
I promised to tell more about Dubrovnik. Something made me wake up very much too early for here, or too late depending on your perspective. The photo is a bit blurry, sorry for that, it was taken at night. This is a special dish for snails. People in the Neretva Delta eat snails, it's a peasant dish that became a gourmet dish, most gourmet dishes originally are peasant dishes.
Anyway I am not going to die missing snails, but they weren't bad either.
They were salty from the butter and some spices I couldn't identify, and a bit chewy. The taste was somewhere between shrimp and oysters only the flesh of the snails themselves was less salty. There is a faintly ashy taste, and I elected to finish the red wine I had with my Fishermen's Soup, and had the waitress select a nice dry white wine. The right wine does make a difference with snails. She did an excellent job of selecting the right wine.
I had a type of custard that is like a very big flan for desert, it was decorated with a couple of mint leaves, and was delicious.
The place I had all this is Proto. I ate there both nights in Dubrovnik. The first night because I got lost, and after finally relocating the place I was staying, I decided not to stray too far in search of food, this place is like only one street over. That night I had a platter of prscut. This place being gourmet, and catering to a lot of foreigners didn't serve it with slices of onion, or green onions as people here do in real life, it was cut in the Italian manner, which makes it harder to eat. The way it should be done is in very thin small slices. Prscut is chewy in the extreme, and the thin small slices customary in Dalmatia as opposed to Italian style slices make it easier to eat.
That was an extremely good meal too.
The night was quite warm, and there were a lot of people out walking around, listening to live music until late.
The lady I rented the room from was worried the noise from the Stradum might keep me awake. I told her not to worry, it wasn't that much, especially compared to a Saturday night in Dublin!
Anyway I am not going to die missing snails, but they weren't bad either.
They were salty from the butter and some spices I couldn't identify, and a bit chewy. The taste was somewhere between shrimp and oysters only the flesh of the snails themselves was less salty. There is a faintly ashy taste, and I elected to finish the red wine I had with my Fishermen's Soup, and had the waitress select a nice dry white wine. The right wine does make a difference with snails. She did an excellent job of selecting the right wine.
I had a type of custard that is like a very big flan for desert, it was decorated with a couple of mint leaves, and was delicious.
The place I had all this is Proto. I ate there both nights in Dubrovnik. The first night because I got lost, and after finally relocating the place I was staying, I decided not to stray too far in search of food, this place is like only one street over. That night I had a platter of prscut. This place being gourmet, and catering to a lot of foreigners didn't serve it with slices of onion, or green onions as people here do in real life, it was cut in the Italian manner, which makes it harder to eat. The way it should be done is in very thin small slices. Prscut is chewy in the extreme, and the thin small slices customary in Dalmatia as opposed to Italian style slices make it easier to eat.
That was an extremely good meal too.
The night was quite warm, and there were a lot of people out walking around, listening to live music until late.
The lady I rented the room from was worried the noise from the Stradum might keep me awake. I told her not to worry, it wasn't that much, especially compared to a Saturday night in Dublin!
# posted by Katja R. @ 8:41 PM 
