Periwinkles - Animal or Vegetable?

When I think of periwinkles, I think of the vine that grows profusely in my back garden that has little purple flowers on it in the spring. I'm sure this is what Mrs. Bucket is referring to when she mentions her Royal Doulton with the hand-painted periwinkles. (You Brit-com fans know what I'm talking about.)

So when the menu description for the sea scallops included a salad of arugula and periwinkles I was expecting a salad with little purple flowers on it. Eating flowers is not unheard of. There are entire cookbooks devoted to serving up flowers. Although it's my preference to enjoy flowers in the garden or in a vase, I was willing to give it a try. (A curry spice blend that I made last fall used dried rose petals.)

I'm expecting flowers so you can imagine my surprise when the salad was delivered to the table with what appeared to be tiny little stones on the plate. I started making assumptions, the first of which was that periwinkles were not in season and face it, you can't just replace them with tulips. I also assumed that the things in my salad were tiny little stones because I tapped them with my fork. Then I noticed that I had a half lemon with a hat pin in it. The lemon and the hat pin must be there for a reason. I began to suspect that the little stones were not a decorative garnish. A closer look revealed that they were in fact tiny shells. According to Mark, they were what the English call winkles. (Of course, this was a French restaurant and apparently the French call them periwinkles.)

Mark told me about going to the seaside as a child and gathering up the winkles and how his mom or grandma would cook them up and they all snacked on them. The pin is used to get the meat out of the shell. (The lemon was just there to keep me from swallowing the pin.) Even though I was hearing about how wonderful they are from a man who thinks jellied eels are yummy, I decided to give it a try.

I wasn't particularly adept at getting the meat out of the shell. In order to avoid the bloodbath that would occur if I pricked myself (Plavix does an excellent job!) Mark got the meat out of a shell for me. Escargot it was not. Imagine chewy sand. That's what a winkle tastes like. But at least now I have an informed opinion, which is probably more than I will ever have about jellied eels.