Tripes à la Mode de Caen

Tripe blanched twice in fresh water before anything else happens, then cooked in cider for most of a day.

Pork, Beef. Not vegetarian — contains beef, pork.

Ingredients

• 2 kg dressed tripe, mixed kinds
• 2 pig's trotters or 1 calf's foot, split
• 4 onions, sliced
• 4 carrots, in rounds
• 1 leek, sliced
• 4 cloves garlic
• 1 litre dry cider
• 150 ml calvados
• 3 bay leaves
• a few thyme and parsley sprigs
• 6 cloves
• 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
• a strip of beef or pork fat, to cover
• salt

Method

1. THE TRIPE IS BLANCHED TWICE IN FRESH WATER BEFORE ANYTHING ELSE HAPPENS, and this is the step that decides whether the dish is edible. Covered with cold water, brought to the boil, drained, RINSED, and the whole thing done again in clean water. What comes off is the smell, and it is why people think they dislike tripe. One blanch is not enough and reusing the water achieves nothing -- the point is that what came out goes down the sink.
2. TRIPE SOLD AS DRESSED IS ALREADY CLEANED, and this is still necessary. Dressed means scalded and scraped, not that it has nothing left to give up.
3. IT COOKS FOR EIGHT TO TEN HOURS AND THERE IS NO SHORTCUT. Tripe is almost entirely collagen: for most of that time it stays rubbery, and then it turns, quite suddenly, to something soft and gelatinous. Taken out at four hours it is exactly as tough as when it went in, which is how most people's one attempt at this ends.
4. MIXED KINDS, NOT ONE. Blanket, honeycomb, book and reed all behave differently and the mixture is what gives the pot its range of textures.
5. A SHEET OF FAT LAID OVER THE TOP under the lid keeps the surface from drying across so long a cooking, and bastes it as it renders.
6. Tripe cut into strips about 4 cm wide.
7. FIRST BLANCH: covered with cold water, brought to the boil, boiled 5 minutes, DRAINED and rinsed under cold water. The pan washed out.
8. SECOND BLANCH: the same again in clean water. Drained and rinsed well.
9. A large earthenware pot layered with the onions, carrots and leek, then the tripe, the split trotters pushed in among it, and the garlic, bay, herbs, cloves and peppercorns.
10. The cider and calvados poured in to just cover. Salted lightly -- it reduces a long way.
11. The sheet of fat laid over the surface.
12. Covered tightly, and into a 130C oven for 8 to 10 HOURS, or overnight.
13. The fat and the loose bones removed, with any meat from the trotters returned.
14. Tasted and salted properly now. The liquid should be thick and faintly sticky from the collagen; reduced on the hob if it is not.
15. Served very hot in deep bowls with boiled potatoes. Better reheated the next day.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under France · All recipes