A Matter of Tripe and Death

A matter of tripe and social death to be more accurate. 

With flat cap on head, whippet down my trews, and clogs on my feet I cooked tripe one night last week. It is something that I make infrequently, though the Dear Leader (may her reign of terror never end) enjoys it as much as I do. Perhaps it is tripe's association with poverty that we'd prefer to detach ourselves from. 

For the record the tripe I used was the prepared version sold in Booth's, supplied by Andy Holt's Real Lancashire Black Pudding Company, and very good it is too. The recipe I used was my standard one for the stuff - for two of us I prepared about a pound and a half of chopped onion, three quarters of a pound of that tripe cut into commemorative stamp rectangles, lots of pepper, a bit of salt, a grind of nutmeg (posh aren't we?) and a pint of milk all in one pan brought to a simmer and cooked very slowly thus for about an hour. The cooked milk, an antique ivory (who let Nigel Slater in here?), is thickened with a roux before being returned to the tripe and onions and the lot served with buttery mash. 

The result is delicious, almost too sweet for a savoury dish. It slips down the throat beautifully, the tripe with a texture/feel like oysters, the onions melted into the sauce until their presence is hard to detect. This is something that merits inclusion in a meal with friends, but I would not dare to because of its poor origins.The French are far less class conscious about their food, indeed they are proud when dishes have peasant origins, but we still seem intent on following their haute cuisine rather than cuisine paysanne or even bourgoise. In this context a typically British saw springs to mind - it is social death to serve offal at a dinner party. 

Why is that?

I would welcome a plate of kidneys devilled or otherwise at some social troughing. I think there are few meats as delightful as lamb's liver, if it is cooked so the inside remains pink and moist. Of all the beef stews (casseroles or perhaps ragout, surely - Mrs Bottomley-Smythe) oxtail is the most unctuous and satisfying. Do sweetbreads, horribly expensive and hard to source, still count as offal? As with the lamb's liver, cooked with a gentle hand they are sublime. I love pig's trotters cooked to jellied perfection. 

Will I then have the courage of my convictions (I rarely do) and get around to serving say a tripe amuse bouche or hors d'oeuvre (there we are again, as so often in culinary matters we slip into French to 'raise the tone,' as per Mrs Bottomley-Smythe) to dinner party guests? Probably not. In Britain even in 2015 it would still be social death. So in a French saying of which Mrs B-S would not approve, vive la revolution! Aux tripes, concitoyens.

Obsessed with Onions

I go through phases when certain ingredients grab my attention to the point that they for a while become obsessions. These may be triggered by food I'm served, by a TV cookery show, something read in a cook book (the most frequent source), or by an aspect of a dish I've prepared, as was the case last week.

A biryani made with loads of onions in the sauce/body of the dish was finished with some caramelised and slightly crispy fried onions on top of the rice. Biryanis, btw, give the lie to an advert about takeaways where a supposed law of the curry is that the sauce always goes on top of the rice. Onions for that dish provided the deeply savoury flavour at the heart of the sauce, whilst onions from the exact same bag gave it a sweeter finish, the same ingredient made entirely different by different cooking methods.

Other things enriched that curry - potato, pumpkin, peas, plus ginger and spices. But it was the onion that caught the palate's notice. No wonder there were riots in India a few years ago when onions were in short supply - what would we do without them? I love raw onion in salads; baked onions; in cheesy potato grattins; onion gravy... but most of all I love fried onions, mahogany to black, the way mobile burger bars get them - you fear for your health on so many levels, but what a wonderful flavour.

On Lancaster market this Saturday I bought a 5kg bag of white onions for £2, ridiculously good value (the delightful examples within are a bit undersize for the supermarkets' cretinous policies). As an aside, my £10.10 worth of fruit and veg purchased there would probably provide the vegetable matter (and much of the starch) to get us through the week if we wanted to be frugal - 3 persimmons, 4 giant baking spuds, 5kg white onions, 2 avocados, 15 clementines, 1/2lb mushrooms, 4 limes, a mango, a papaya, 2 bags of tiny sweet peppers, a big swede, a head of celery and a cucumber. I may have missed something else out [I had as I discovered when checking this - add three pomegranates and the same number of sweet potatoes].

With a stock of sharply tasty onions to hand (they rate about Brief Encounter on the peeling tears scale, happily not The Railway Children ending though) I've begun a campaign to make the best of them. Yesterday was French onion soup, cooked slowly for about 90 minutes. I guess around 30 or so onions went into the pot, cooking down to creamy khaki before being thickened with flour ('Daaarling, nobody uses flour to thicken nowadays' - sod off), perked up with a glass of white wine, let down (physically rather than morally) with some ham stock, and finished with a dog end of a French cheese whose name escapes me grated in. It was wonderful, a gloop rather than a liquid, and begged for a glass of roughish red to accompany it. We had two, one for each bowlful. The Dear Leader (may she rule 1000 years) was gracious in her praise.

That barely made a dent in the onion mountain. Tomorrow (man cannot live by onions alone) will be - so very Northern I want to say 'hey up lad' - tripe and onions. Anyone who has never tried it, I pity you.

Only the Lonely

Midweek the Dear Leader was away overnight on teaching duties (Fortifying Your Secret Island 101), and Sternest Critic was staying an extra night of his 'reading week' at university before venturing home for his version of R&R, S&S (sleep and steak). I was thus left alone, and was just looking to make a quick and simple supper, and to enjoy something that I would not have cooked if enjoying company.

There are some things that are best eaten alone: curried sprouts probably head that list, with the sauce I made for penne pasta - a sort of reformed putanesca - not far behind. Olive oil was warmed with sliced garlic (lots), and a red chili snipped into it in the vain hope of avoiding chili-eye, then a whole tin of anchovies chopped and added with their oil. When they were all melted together and vaguely cooked through three fresh tomatoes minus their skins were grated in and the lot heated to bubbling point. With lots of pepper and salt and a generous amount of grated parmesan it was utterly delicious, but must have given me breath like a particularly unhygienic medieval French peasant's.

Kippers I feel qualify for the best eaten apart list, unless both of you indulge. When we were on Islay and Jura last summer I opted for kippers at breakfast a couple of times, while DL went for something that when we were in the car later in the day was less assertive. But these foul smelling things (sprout curry apart) do tend to be very tasty. The exception is durian. I had heard much about it so when given the chance to try some (in Johor Bahru, just over the causeway from Singapore into Malyasia) I did. The smell, people said and wrote, is vile, but the taste sublime. They were right about the smell - think a long untended septic tank - but not the taste, which I'd describe as mildly mucal watered down mango. That is something best eaten by other people.

The Importance of Eating Turnips

As far as I'm concerned the turnip (I resisted the cliche 'humble turnip' though it wasn't easy) is the Erik Satie of the vegetable world; looked down on by lovers of vegetables regarded as more accomplished, aparagus perhaps the Debussy of the greengrocer's shop, but offering lots of surprises and an ever-present strength.

A couple of varieties will feature in this evening's root salad, just peeled, cut into matchsticks, and teamed up with carrot, kohl rabi, celeriac (perhaps it's going too far to call celeriac the JC Bach of the plate, wrongly overlooked in favour of its more famous relative) and beetroot, only the celeriac needing blanching. Exceptionally virtuous certainly, but with real gourmet merits as well, the turnip will stand out in this company. It makes a fine soup too, Creme a la Vierge; takes some beating in the form of glazed baby versions as a Spring accompaniment to lamb; and with only a couple cooked with the spuds for a mash lifts it in the flavour stakes. 

With our supermarkets never out of flashier veg imported from the rings of Saturn I think we need to make an effort to get back to our roots, as it were, and make the most of the turnip and others of its ilk, including the carrot and even the much despised Swede (logical that, given the Swede is actually a turnip, though not one I'd be for eating raw). I experimented with a mash that incorporated spuds, turnip, Jerusalem artichokes and parsnip the other day, which was far more interesting than the ordinary spud-only type, and as a bonus had matured in flavour overnight when I used the few spoonfuls remaining as the basis of (I can't bring myself to use the word rissoles) 'potato cakes' mixed in with some chopped ham, cheese, and a couple of eggs. And anway, I really wanted to use that title.