Warm Tripe alla Parmigiana

For this next post, I decided to really step out of the box and try something new. Not just something new in the sense of a new recipe, but also that of a new product that I have never worked with before. Tripe. 

I found myself alone on a Thursday night this week, my wife away on a short vacation, myself working a long week in the kitchen, so I thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to try something that my family might call a little funky. Even Mario admits in the recipe notes that this used to be a tough sell in his restaurant. But this dish did look really good, tripe that was swimming in a rich tomato sauce with root vegetables and some shaved Parmesan cheese. Mario assures us that this dish has gained popularity at Babbo and now flies out the kitchen door. So what the heck? I'll give it a try. 

So just what is tripe? It's the lining from a cow's stomach. Actually it can come from a variety of animals, but most commonly tripe comes from cow. Mmmmm, stomach lining. Very appealing isn't it? But to be fair, tripe is right in line with the Italian's philosophy of nothing goes to waste. 

Tripe is actually very popular in many cuisines of the world. In France, it is boiled then smoked and made into Andouille sausage. In India, it is made into a stew called Chakna. In Scotland, it is the main ingredient in the making of haggis. In Mexico, it is made into a stew called Menudo. And that pho that you get at the Vietnamese restaurant? Yep it's in there. In fact, tripe is often used as a filler in many American breakfast sausages. 

I was able to find some tripe at my local grocery store. I mean it's not like there's a long line of people waiting to buy it. I was probably the only one that bought any this week. 

The recipe called for what is known as the honeycomb variety of beef tripe, which gets its name because as you can see it looks like a giant honeycomb. 

I start by placing the tripe and a large pot and covered it with water. 

To the water is added vinegar and vanilla extract. I know, it sounded weird to me too, but Mario insists that by putting these two ingredients in the pot of tripe, it will remove the uric smell that often makes tripe objectionable. 

The tripe gets brought to a boil, then reduced to a simmer for about an hour until tender....

Or so the instructions say.....

I gave the tripe over an hour and a half. It was tougher than shoe leather. But by this time it was approaching about 9 o'clock at night, so I took the pot off the heat. No big deal I thought. The next step in the process was to cool the tripe overnight in the cooking liquid anyway, so I figured that I would give it a little bit more cooking time the next night when I finished the preparation for my dinner. 

Before I started re-preparing the tripe, I did plenty of research to make sure that I wasn't seeing something wrong. The Internet was quite inconsistent with cooking time for tripe. Many people said an hour and a half, some said that it would take at least a couple of hours, and Thomas Keller of the French Laundry Cookbook has a tripe recipe that cooks for about 5 hours. 

So I put the tripe back onto the stove and brought it to a simmer for several hours.....

Yep, still shoe leather. Except now I had this god awful smell of tripe cooking in my home. It was really nauseating. Like I had a golf ball of vomit in the back of my throat. 

I checked the tripe again. Way too tough.

At this point, having gone way past the one hour cooking time in the instructions, and furiously trying to light every scented candle that I own to kill the aroma, I was left with a worthless piece of stomach, while mine remained empty. I decided to cut my losses and just stop this train wreck altogether. Luckily tripe is very inexpensive, less than $3 a pound, so I don't feel bad letting this go. I just feel bummed that we have another recipe that didn't quite work out for this blog. 

Mine: 

Mario's: 

I have no idea what went wrong here. Did I get a bad piece of tripe? Mario if you are out there in Internet Land I could really use your help on this one!

I really doubt that I would try to make this dish again. The cookbook was right though. It did fly out of my kitchen. 'Right into the fuckin' bin', as Gordon Ramsey would say. 

Until next time...