Do you like tripe or hate it? Tom and I love it, but we cook it only for ourselves these days. Observing the polite endurance of dinner guests to whom we hopefully served it once, some years ago, taught us caution. But tripe is really lovely. It embraces any good flavors you introduce to it and has an unusual, very pleasing mouth-feel.
Tripe has a few strikes against it, of course. First, it’s a cow’s stomach. People feel there’s something gross about that – though why it’s any more distressing to contemplate than a cow’s liver or any of its muscles that we so relish (T-bone steak, anyone?) is a mystery to me. Granted, it has an undeniably rubbery appearance and texture when raw – but that doesn’t persist after cooking. Finally, the very word has become an insult: “What are you trying to tell me? That’s a load of tripe!” That is definitely negative PR.
Notwithstanding all this, tripe can make many a great winter dish, from the classic French tripes à la mode de Caen to the homely Philadelphia pepper pot soup. Italian cooks do marvelous things with tripe – indeed, some Italians regard a fondness for tripe as a guarantee of one’s gastronomic seriousness – and one of my favorite preparations is the recipe I made this week from Marcella Hazan’s Classic Italian Cookbook.
I have the first edition of that ground-breaking-for-Americans book. Tom and I bought it when it first came out in 1973. It lost its dust jacket decades ago, has had its spine repaired with tape more than once, and has many pages dotted with olive oil and tomato sauce stains. (The photo here is not of my copy.) So let me tell you about how I made Marcella’s trippa alla parmigiana.
The tripe we get nowadays is already completely cleaned and precooked, blessedly, which saves hours of advance preparation. I boiled my hunks of tripe for just 15 minutes with a little carrot, onion, and celery; cooled them down; and induced Tom, my knife-man, to cut them into neat little strips. I sautéed more carrot, onion, and celery in olive oil; added garlic, parsley, and rosemary; stirred in the tripe and mixed it with the other ingredients; bathed it all with white wine, tomatoes, and broth; and put the pot in a moderate oven for two hours.
When the tripe was fork-tender and had perfumed the entire kitchen delightfully, I took it out of the oven, stirred in some softened butter and a lot of grated parmigiano, and sat with Tom to dinner.
It was, as always, wonderful. It’s true the texture of tripe is not like that of any other meat, but you wouldn’t want it to be: It’s a unique palatal experience, soft but not mushy, chewy but not tough. The dish doesn’t taste “innardy” at all, in the sense of that word that people dislike. The tripe absorbs and blends the flavors of all those simple, good ingredients into its own succulent essence. It’s a wonderfully soothing dish: Your stomach greets each mouthful as a long-lost cousin, and each bite makes you want to move on to the next one.
I have a few tripe recipes in my own cookbooks. Here’s one I particularly like, one of the richest tripe preparations I’ve come across. This would make a great company dinner, if you can assemble a band of tripe aficionados.
You certainly make tripe sound appealing, Diane, so much so that I almost (almost!) could be tempted. With a husband who does love tripe, I have watched him enjoy it over the years with a curious eye. You’ve inspired me to try a taste next time.
PS – love the new picture!