Just hear the name; we can easily guess the main ingredient of this dish is snail. Although it sounds somehow strange, a small snail meat roll using with mayonnaise or chili sauce is pleasant to taste.
The way to make snail meat rolls is not very different from the traditional one to make meat rolls. There are just some small differences in the ingredient, one of which is the integral addition of snails.
The most delicious snails can be served in this dish is the Vietnamese pila polita, whose size is equal to the size of our big toe. Its meat is delicious, crispy and tasty. However, we should be careful not to get confused between this pila polita and the golden snails.
The golden snail is bigger and its yellow shells are unsteadily striated and thin so that easily gets broken. Actually, it is not very easy to buy pila polita; therefore, many homemakers choose rocky snails or helixes instead because the taste is quite the same.
People usually soak snails in rice water to make it clean quickly, and add a few slices of chili to release all sediment from the snails. After that, boil the snails until they are done to a turn. Put the cooked snails into a basket and wait until they cool down a little bit. Then, take the snail meat out of the shells. Notice that we just keep the heads and the white bodies. After mincing, we mixed them with well-grinded pork, pepper, onion, thread carrot…
Materials creating the typical flavor of snail meat rolls are piper lolots. Wash them carefully, slice into small pieces and then mix with the mixture of snail above. We can also put egg yolk into the mixture; it not only helps to reduce the bad smell from snails, but also to stick all ingredients together.
Rice paper is cut in half to make two snail meat rolls as small as two fingers. Doing so would make the roll easy to wrap as well as easy to put into your mouth. Spread out the rice paper on a tray, put the prepared mixture in the middle, wrap it steadily and then fry the roll. Rolls should be wrapped loosely so that they will not be broken and done quickly. When the rolls are well done, pick them out quickly for the oil to run out. Put some piper lolots on the plate and set the snail meat rolls above.
It is recommended that snail meat rolls be eaten when they are still hot. We can use traditional sauce but it is more interesting to eat snail meat rolls with mayonnaise or chili sauce. Snail meat rolls can be served with rice vermicelli and raw vegetables. When eating, we can enjoy diverse tastes from the dish ingredients.
One special attraction from this dish is the combination between folk and “Western” ingredients, mayonnaise. At first, we think this combination will be dull but then it turns out to be very tasty. Put a roll into mayonnaise sauce, bite a small bit and feel how crunchy it is. We can be aware of the strange taste, which is different from the countryside taste of traditional meat rolls. Enjoy the snail meat rolls and recall the rushing back childhood memories.
