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Tripe with Gravy
Boil some tripe in water and when it is boiled, cut it in strips, one quarter of an inch wide and wipe it well with a cloth. Then put it in a saucepan with butter, and when this is melted, add some brown stock or good tomato sauce. son with salt and pepper, cook thoroughly and add a pinch of grated cheese before taking from the saucepan.
Sea- 83
A plain braise of pre-boiled tripe in butter and stock, in the manner of the Roman and Milanese trippa dishes. Nearly all the work is in the first boiling, which the recipe passes over in a few words.
- Buy bleached, cleaned tripeHoneycomb beef tripe from a butcher is already scalded and cleaned. It still needs long simmering: 1 1/2 to 3 hours in salted water with a bay leaf and an onion until a knife point goes through with no resistance. Undercooked tripe is rubbery and no amount of saucing will fix it.
- Wiping with a clothMost likely this means blotting the boiled strips dry before they go into the butter. A clean towel or paper works equally well.
- Cut after boilingThe strips are cut to a quarter-inch after cooking rather than before. Tripe shrinks and firms as it boils, so strips cut beforehand would finish narrower, though the recipe gives no reason for the order.
- Brown stockA period brown stock is roasted-bone beef stock, reduced and fairly gelatinous. Unsalted beef stock reduced by a third is the nearest supermarket equivalent; season at the end, since the reduction concentrates salt.
- Cook thoroughlyIn practice this probably means a gentle simmer of perhaps 20 to 30 minutes with the pan barely covered, until the sauce clings. The tripe is already tender; the purpose is to let it absorb the stock or tomato.
- The cheeseGrated Parmigiano-Reggiano or aged pecorino. The recipe adds it just before the pan comes off the heat; hard cheese can turn grainy if it is boiled hard after going in.
- Quantity and yieldNo amounts are given. Two pounds of raw tripe, 2 to 3 tablespoons butter and about a cup of stock or tomato sauce serves four as a main course with bread.
Tripe cookery survived in Italian regional kitchens long after it had retreated from most English-language cookbooks, and this book treats it as unremarkable everyday meat. Two sauce options are offered, butter and brown stock or tomato, the latter recalling the Roman trippa alla romana. The finishing pinch of grated cheese is the constant in both, and the direction to add it only at the last moment is the same instinct that governs pasta sauces throughout the book.