Finally I had eaten this kind of a rather exotic dish. It is one of my favorite foods to eat because it is different, it is tasty (depending on who cooks it) and also healthy as the protein content of the river snails is just comparable to Beef or better.
It is quite meticulous to prepare the fresh river snails because you just don't cook it right away after buying it from the vendor, you have to make it "Spit" overnight to make it spew out some of the contents of its body like dirt, slime, and sand plus that awful rot taste because of its stomach contents.
So you have to put it on a basin with a bit of water and making sure that it can still breathe. After overnight of soaking you have to clean it by brushing one by one and then crushing the pointy [art of the shell so that after cooking you will have no problem in sucking the delicious flesh from the shell.
Just make sure to take or crush at least the 1/3 part of the shell from the pointy or end part of the shell so that when you suck on the shell you will not leave the tail part of the snail because it is one of the tastiest part of the snail.
After cleaning and crushing the pointy part, you are now ready to saute it in some crushed garlic, onions, and sliced ginger. You can add some hot chili pepper based on your preference. Then you can finally add the river snails and after a few minutes add some fish sauce plus some MSG if you prefer or using it in your recipes as well.
After sauteing in the few minutes just to make sure that the meat is seasoned very well you can now add the second extraction of mature coconut meat. Stir it constantly so that the milk would not coagulate.
After the sauce had been reduced you can finally add the swamp spinach and then the coconut cream. The coconut cream is the first extraction of the shredded mature coconut meat. Cook it for about five minutes more to reduce the sauce a bot more but not too much that it will become oily and coagulated.
My mother didn't cooked it that way which is why the sauce is a bit watery. Maybe she didn't use more coconut cream but nevertheless I enjoyed eating this dish because it is nice and delicious, the sauce is nutty and the snail meat is just superb and a bit "Al dente" or form to the bite. I would prefer a lot of red hot chili peppers because the coconut cream just dissipates the hotness in every mouthful of rice which this dish must be eaten with.
