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.

Pate on the Hoof

Yesterday thinking it was stewing beef I defrosted what turned out to be liver, part of a box of meat that I had delivered by the excellent Henry Rowntree (pictured with one of his prize bulls), whose Aberdeen Angus farm I visited some time ago for Meat Trades Journal and Lancashire Life. We buy a 10kg box from him every few months: his meat is great, and at £120 delivered it is far cheaper than we would pay for similar quality (were it available) in the supermarket. Booth's and maybe Waitrose are the only ones I'd expect to have meat approaching his in quality.

My error, and as my son won't eat liver as is I had to use it to make pate, which he does like. Guess it must be the texture of liver that puts him off. So with a 99p pack of Sainsbury's basic bacon lardons (plenty of the fat needed for the dish), an onion, four small cloves of garlic and a glass of  leftover red wine, plus celery salt, sage and thyme from the garden, and lots of pepper, I set about it. No egg because I zapped the meats fine enough for them not to be too crumbly, and because I forgot to use one.

Using what was doubtless calf's liver made me wonder how it would turn out, pig's being the norm, but reasoning that chicken liver is softer still but makes great pate (I wish I could find how to do the accents) I went ahead.

The result is a very winey-herby-garlicky pate that will be a starter tonight (as ever with pates will have grown in flavour overnight) when we have a friend over taking potluck, and tomorrow when some more are here for what will be a sort of mezze. Or meze.

Making pate always brings home the savings that can be had by doing the cooking yourself instead of buying ready-made. I reckon the amount now garlicking out our fridge would have set us back about £7, maybe more. With a food processor it is ridiculously easy, zap, mix, season, put in a shallow ovenproof dish and cover with foil, put that in a roasting dish with boiling water 1/3 the way up, and cook for about 90 minutes in  an oven at 150C, removing the foil lid 15 minutes from the end to let the top brown. You can tell it's done by the smell, the fact that it comes away from the sides of the dish, and being doubly careful by pricking it with a knife - the juices should be clear, and the knife clean when removed.