[Sca-cooks] Tamales

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Kathleen A Roberts:
>On Fri, 28 Jan 2005 21:27:12 -0500
>  "Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius" <adamantius.magister at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>>>   Oh, and
>>>Menudo, too... they always have Menudo on New Year's Eve.
>
>ick!  tried it cuz it was tripe. i love tripe... as a kid in 
>baltimore, my father used to flop it in egg and dredge it in 
>cornmeal (s/p added), and fry it (in crisco).  then he would put 
>vinegar in the pan and it would make the most wonderful sauce. 
>somewhat crunchy, but not.  ate it with catsup and horseradish.
>
>he was the only person in the family i knew who did tripe. mebbe 
>from his WW2 unofficial cook days?
>
>i suspect it is a texture thing, as the trip in menudo seems a bit 
>woobly to me.

If you're averse to woobly (if I'm right in interpreting that word, 
and I probably am), avoid tripes a la mode du Caen, which is simmered 
gently for about twelve hours, and is, at best, rather gelatinous, 
Tasty, but inclined to be woobly.

I think my favorite preparations are the fried version you mention 
(and there are quite a few variations on that, too), and my absolute 
favorite, Cantonese book tripe (this is a particularly fine-grain 
honeycomb, it looks like a white terrycloth towel, but it also has 
layers folded in upon itself so it looks a bit like the pages of a 
book, joined at the spine), usually sauteed or steamed with ginger 
and scallion, and sometimes with optional fermented black beans and 
chili flakes.

I note from reading some old recipes (say, pre 1960, people like 
James Beard) that butchers sometimes used to sell tripe pre-blanched 
and chilled, to make it a little easier to handle. Some recipes would 
take this blanching into account without specifically referring to 
it, so they gave some rather short cooking times for what would 
otherwise be tripe dishes of the woobly variety, and if followed 
today using unblanched tripe, the effect is different.

I don't _think_ tripe is blanched as a matter of routine anymore, 
anyway. Does anybody know? My usual approach is to allow about three 
hours for it to cook, and if it's tender before that, it's not a 
problem.

Adamantius

-- 




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la 
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them 
eat cake!"
	-- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques 
Rousseau, "Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
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