The Art of Eating In - Cathy Erway [120]
I let the mixture warm up again on the stove, hoping that it wouldn’t taste as bad as it looked. In the meantime, I preheated a Dutch oven for a loaf of no-knead bread that I’d let sit out the night before. Once the menudo was heated through again, I was glad that the jelly texture had broken, and the clear, reddish liquid was now bubbling. I lowered the heat to a low simmer and hopped in the shower to ready myself for my guests.
The kitchen had taken on a deeply savory aroma by the time I got out. It was marked by piquant and spicy red chili powder, which I’d bought at a specialty Mexican grocery, since the recipe called for pouring in a whole cupful. It didn’t smell recognizably like pork, or trotter, or tripe. But it smelled pretty good. For the first time, I was actually looking forward to tasting the crazy combination of substances I had thrown into that pot. Over the next hour, I watched the stove as I baked a loaf of no-knead bread to go with the brunch, chopped fresh cilantro, and added hominy to the stew when it was almost done.
By twelve thirty, my three guests had arrived. Jordan was nearly unresponsive, she was so hungover. It didn’t help matters much that it was unbearably hot that morning. I brought my single fan into the living room and tried to air out the room, but between baking the bread and simmering the stew for an hour and a half, plus the sunlight streaming in through the windows, the heat was scorching.
I’d turned the heat off under the pot of menudo about a half hour earlier, once I’d tasted the stuff. While doing so, I noticed that the squares of tripe had not only shrunken to about half their size, but were the texture of soft jelly rather than rubber and were becoming softer the longer they cooked. They had also turned from off-white to deep brown, thanks to the burgundy broth they were simmered in. The hominy, since it had been added so much later, added some nice contrast in that it was still white. I’d had cold salsas that had hominy in them before, but I’d never had it in a soup or stew. The pale pellets of preserved corn tasted a lot like fresh tortillas and were a welcome, neutral addition to the stew.
It was a humid morning, and a short-lived downpour had added to the moisture the steaming stockpot had already brought to the room. We sat down at the small table in the middle of the room. Just as I’d predicted, Aaron looked the worst off. His eyes were bleary and half-open, his throat scratchy sounding when he spoke. Jordan had probably suffered the worst of her hangovers for the weekend the morning before that one, but she still was definitely not at 100 percent. Mai didn’t look too bad, nor did she say she felt so bad herself. I was strangely awake, and very hungry. Everyone dove for the bread first.
We had a round of coffee before my guests tiptoed over to the pot of menudo on the stove. I’d made sure to remove the trotter before they came. Aaron stared into the pot.
“So that’s tripe, huh?” he said.
It looked a lot more appealing now that it had been cooked than the strange white stuff I’d chopped the day before. The tripe squares were so light, they came floating to the surface of the stew easily with the stir of a spoon. I scooped out portions into individual bowls for everyone and garnished the tops with sprigs of cilantro. Brunch was served.
“Mm,” Mai said, taking a slurp of the broth alone. “What did you do to make the soup?”
I told her about the extraneous pork bone, leaving out the fact that it had actually been a foot, rather than just a bone.
Jordan coughed on her next sip. She cleared her throat. “This is spicy,” she said, her eyes reddening.
“Yeah, but it’s kind of waking me up,” Aaron said. “I can see how something with a really good kick would do that,