The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [116]
A couple of weeks flew by, and then Aaron told me he and Mai were planning to celebrate Mai’s birthday at their place on a Saturday. He suggested that we make this our designated “get wasted” night and have brunch the following day at my apartment. Aaron said it was the perfect occasion since chances were good we would all be getting trashed together anyway. We agreed.
Literally the lining of an animal’s stomach, tripe is one of those cuts categorized as offal. These include kidney, heart, liver, brain, ears—the entrails and organs from a butchered animal aside from the fleshy, meaty cuts. These are generally considered less delectable than meat, although for any one of these cuts, you’re bound to find aficionados for it in some part of the world, or some beloved dish that features it. Offal has traditionally been reserved for the poor; hence, it is cheap, but people have been finding ways to make it more palatable across the world, in some cases turning them into delicacies, such as headcheese (made from simmering a pig’s head and coagulating the pieces into a sliceable block), foie gras (the fattened liver of a goose), fried sweetbreads (the thymus gland), or braised chicken feet, another one of my dim sum favorites. The offerings go on. Tripe is usually chopped, then simmered, stewed, or steamed until it becomes very tender and has soaked in plenty of flavor, as its rubbery-textured though fairly tasteless character is hard to swallow for many.
My experience with tripe before this had been limited to Chinese food; either served cold and gently seasoned, or in a warm five-spice stew, it was usually on the table at dim sum brunches I attended when I was growing up. I knew that tripe was almost unheard-of in American cooking, and I would learn over the years that its texture was particularly off-putting to my peers. It’s true that its blubbery mouthfeel and rippling, weblike surface are uniquely weird, especially at the first sight or taste.
Most meat purchased by Americans today has been stripped of any traces of the animal it once was—reduced to trimmed, boned, and often skinned cuts of white meat, or ground meat patties. It often comes to grocery stores as chunks of ready-to-cook stew meat or stir-fry strips, no slicing necessary. I’ve found that many people are horrified or offended by the sight of raw meat with telltale signs of the animal it came from, such as a quail with its feet still attached that I once cooked for friends, or a whole fish cooked and served with its head still intact. As a culture, we’ve strayed pretty far from having to acknowledge what meat actually looks like before it’s prepared, so their shock is understandable.
I personally share the opinion of many advocates who say that if an individual chooses to eat animals, he or she should be willing to confront their death face-to-face by taking part in their slaughter, if only once—just so that we’re more mindful of what it takes to put meat on a plate. Well, I hadn’t witnessed an animal slaughter (unless you counted boiling those lobsters, cooking live shellfish, such as clams, or just catching fish). But I agree with the premise of facing what you’re going to eat, even at the unpleasant necessary stages of rawness. I’ll further that by arguing that if an individual enjoys eating tripe, headcheese, or another type of offal, he or she should be willing to cook it—and that often means encountering meat at its unsightliest.
The next day, after confirming Aaron, Mai, and Jordan for the menudo brunch, I called my parents to ask them how to say tripe in Chinese. Sensing that Chinatown was the easiest place to find a butcher to purchase the cut from, I thought it would be helpful to know. On the phone, my mom got distracted and started asking me life questions. By the end of our conversation, I still had no idea how to say tripe in Chinese, as she insisted she had forgotten. She must have told my dad about my tripe-cooking plans, though,