Catalan Cargolade or Snail Feast

This takes place in the open air on a fine day and in a beautiful spot, usually at Easter, and it consists of hundreds of petit gris snails rubbed with salt and hot chilli pepper placed on a grill with a fine mesh and cooked over a fire of vine prunings and stumps. The fire must not flame. While they cook they are drizzled with melted pork fat until they sizzle; they take 10–12 minutes to cook. There is a special instrument, a metal funnel attached to a long handle, which is used for basting spit-roasted meat. Called an entonnoir, it has a small hole in the bottom, and as it heats, the piece of pork fat placed in the funnel melts and can be dripped carefully into each snail, drop by drop. Once cooked they are eaten with aïoli spread on large slices of toasted pain de campagne. The snails are followed by grilled black puddings, butifarre sausages and lamb cutlets, and it is all washed down with a red Collioure or a Corbières, served lightly chilled.