Comfort cooking

[desperance]

It has been said, I am not as other men. Others have comfort food, which is familiar, unchallenging, reductive. I have comfort cooking, which is - well, rather the opposite.

Today I made a gorgeous horseradish sauce from my own grown horseradish root, my own chives, my own mayonnaise. Somebody else's Dijon mustard, which I can't replicate on account of not being in Dijon; somebody else's sour cream, which I can't produce on account of not having a cow. Nor, frankly, wanting one. I would adore the fresh dairy that comes with, but animal husbandry is not for me.

And now I am cooking tripe. I have never done this before; but there's a stall in the market that sells four different kinds, and I need to know. So. I have four different kinds of tripe, which I have washed and soaked and parboiled with salt and washed again, and then fried with onions and garlic, then sizzled in red wine vinegar. Then I added tomatoes and herbs and a dried chilli and some smoked paprika, and it's all in the slow cooker now. I'll give it a taste before I go to bed, but I may leave it going overnight. And we shall see. If it's nice, there are cannellini beans soaking to be added tomorrow, and some pork and smoked bacon too. If it's horrid, well. I can do something nice with beans and pork and smoked bacon.

[ETA: I should explain, the horseradish sauce and the tripe do not go together. No, no. The horseradish is for the beef sandwiches, for lunch. The beef is from the brisket that I simmered in the stock. The stock is for the beef-and-fennel risotto that I shall eat tonight while the tripe is slowly cooking - tho' I neglected to mention that a little of that stock has also found its way into the tripe.]

Comments

[miladyinsanity.livejournal.com]

I don't do tripe, but can I come and live with you anyway?

*eyes hall kitchen mournfully*

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

My mother (an excellent cook) did tripe once when I was a child as we had never had it before, and felt we should. It was like a string vest, boiled. We did not warm to tripe, although much later I had tripe soup in Istanbul and found it more palatable, apart from the bits of old string vest at the bottom of the bowl.

You are a braver man than I.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, phooey. You can't let one or two unhappy meals and an antipathy to underwear put you off - this is food! It must eventually be edible, or other people wouldn't ed it! Took me forty years to learn to like celery...

When I was a kid, very occasionally Mum would make herself a bowl of tripe, and eat it by herself and never offer us a spoonful. I have never quite figured out why she did this. My eventual first encounter was at the Semana Negra in Spain, where they were serving tripe a la provencale in the giant food tent. Which I kinda liked, though I may have exaggerated my pleasure on account of keeping company with a really prissy American who couldn't conceivably eat it once he'd discovered what it was.

But I've been walking past the tripe stall for years, looking, thinking "must do that" - and here I am finally doing it, and y'know what? It's nice already. By tomorrow night, when I've added the cannellini beans and other meats and fiddled with the flavourings and so forth, it's going to be gorgeous.

[anef.livejournal.com]

My mother never cooked tripe, presumably because she hated it and refused to inflict it on us. And to be fair, if she had cooked it we would probably have refused to eat it on the grounds of general yuckiness (yes, I know, without trying it. What can I say? I've grown up since then.) I have had Polish tripe soup which I liked, and stir fried tripe in a Chinese restaurant which was not unpleasant, but uninteresting in a stringy sort of way. Anyway, good luck. Please report back from the frontiers of exploratory cooking.

PS if you are ever in Paris I strongly recommend a visit to Ribouldingue, a charming little restaurant specialising in offal.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

At this halfway stage, it's looking good. I should probably not have cooked all four varieties of tripe together (they would have benefited from different cooking-times, I think), but I knew that before I started; this is compare-and-contrast.

And thank you for the recommendation. If I'm ever there, I will pursue. Similarly, next time you're in London, if you've never eaten at St John, it's well worth seeking out. I had brains and chitterlings, me...

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I love the kind of cooking that all fits together, with the meat going to this purpose and the stock to that. Lunch today will be baked potatoes with the surplus sauce from last night's spag.bol. - not in the same class, obviously, but the same principle.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yup. Today's challenge is to make it all fit together. There are the beans, which I have cooked separately because they don't do so good in a slow-cooker, even parboiled first; there is the pork, which I have browned this morning and added to the tripe-in-sauce (which actually tastes fine already, but I am hoping will taste finer yet after a whole nother session of slow cooking).

Are you two eaters of tripe, or is it all too much about the texture...?

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Are you two eaters of tripe, or is it all too much about the texture...?

Don't know, I've never tried. I keep thinking I should, and eyeing up those nice glass jars of ready meal that they sell in French supermarkets, but somehow it nevers happens. And durham_rambler doesn't exactly encourage me to go for it, either.

On the other hand, he insisted I buy some globe artichokes...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Globe artichokes? Nom-nom-nom. He's not all bad, y'know.

But I shall bottle up some tripe and pass it along; you can make the cautious endeavour, and if you don't like it, it won't matter.