Finally I got round to cooking a tripe. Not
that I have a childhood trauma or something, because in my closest family nobody
ate tripe as far as I remember, however this is not very popular ingredient
nowadays, especially in the United Kingdom. During the Industrial Revolution,
especially in northern part of England
tripe was a very popular snack. Poorest part of the society when coming back
from shift in factories use to grab piece of tripe drizzled with some vinegar –
it was cheap and fast food. There were special places where the whole process
of cleaning and cooking quite smelly tripe took place. This is very interesting
period in history of British food. On one hand there were poor working class
people eating cheap cuts but on the other the Industrial Revolution changed the
availability, distribution and production of food like never before. This
period also brought the first food adulteration due to a rapidly increasing
population. The food industry had a difficult time dealing with shortages of
materials and in an effort to keep costs down, bulked up food items with bad
quality fillers. One of the products that suffered the most was tea. On the
other hand due to the expansion of railway system food was transported to the
many places that could not get before. Faster transport meant better quality
food available to more people... What I was writing about? Oh yes, the tripe.
Nowadays it is ingredient quite difficult
to find and the whole process of bleaching and blanching the tripe is quite
long and it makes tripe nearly as expensive as stewing beef. This could be a reason
that people don’t buy it anymore and even good butchers don’t have it in stock
all the time. I have ordered some and after searching the internet I found few
Italian recipes. I didn’t want to cook tripe in traditional Polish way – spicy in
broth with lots of marjoram, because my partner can’t stand them this way – I think
he was forced to eat them when he was a child. So we both ate Italian style
tripe and it was tasty, however it isn’t something that I would cook on a
regular basis. I believe I haven’t found my perfect tripe recipe yet.
This recipe is a compilation of few that I came
across and to be quite honest the photos revealed something more stew like –
thick, with little sauce. Mine tripe was more like a soup, thick and filling
though. Marjoram is my addition, because I think it goes very well with tripe.
As far as I am concerned this recipe is quite close to the traditional Trippa
alla Romana, because of the use of wine and pecorino cheese.
Serves 4-6
750g tripe, bleached, pre cooked and cut into
strips
4 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, peeled
2 carrots, peeled
2 celery sticks
3 garlic cloves, peeled
150ml dry white wine
200ml vegetable stock
2 x 400ml tins of chopped tomatoes
2 peperoncino peppers
2 bay leaves
few tsp dried marjoram
salt
freshly ground black pepper
handful of fresh mint, roughly chopped if large
leaves
handful of freshly grated pecorino cheese
(parmesan will do if you don’t have pecorino)
Chop the celery, carrots and onions very finely. I
used food processor.
Heat a large pan and add olive oil. Next add the
chopped vegetables and fry for about 5 minutes. Stir occasionally. Next add the
wine and cook until nearly all of it evaporates. Add the tripe, whole garlic
cloves, bay leaves, whole peperoncino peppers, tomatoes with the whole juice,
stock to the pan. Season with salt and pepper (lots of pepper!), add marjoram,
stir, cover, turn the heat down and simmer for about 2 hours, stirring occasionally.
Serve with some grated pecorino and fresh mint on
the top.
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