Adventures in Offal

When I got up this morning, I asked Tizi, “Is there such a thing as a tripe hangover?”

She said she didn’t think so.  

We went out to dinner with our friends Mirko and Anna from the bookstore last night, to a new place in Rimini called Trattoria San Giovanni (old in Rimini, new to us). Mirko said they’re known for their tagliatelle, which were recently rated #2 by the Confraternita della Tagliatella, of which there are 33 members (by statute), among them a Prior, a Chamberlain, and a Gabbeliere (which translates as “excise officer” or “tax collector”–we might think CFO).

Tizi and I know of the Confraternita because her cousins’ tagliatelle at their restaurant, Trattoria Delinda, took first place two years in a row. These people–I mean the Confraternita in particular and the people in this part of Italy (Romagna) in general–are that serious about this famous pasta dish. A Prior? A Chamberlain? In Zen and the Romagna Tagliatella, author and pasta-phile Marco Galizzi speaks (in translation) of tagliatelle as “a crossroads of roads… for an initiatory journey, an endless departure…”  I’m not sure what this means, but I couldn’t agree more. I’m all in on the endless departure.

At San Giovanni, the tagliatelle were more than good. They were excellent of their kind. When we’d finished off the platter, Mirko said, “Shall we have some tripe?”

Why not?

Well, because it’s tripe. That’s why not.

I first said no to tripe in the fall of 1977, at a San Marino club picnic held on a Sunday afternoon in a park on the edge of Utica, a northeastern suburb of Detroit. Tizi and I weren’t married yet. I was very much in the initiation stage of our relationship–being introduced to Italian culture, the language, the food, the noise, the love, the multiple pleasures of the dinner table. Or in this case, the picnic table. And I recall a vat, bigger than that, a cauldron, a tub of tripe! and a stout late middle-aged woman ladling it onto white plastic plates, chunks of that stewed waffle-like matter in a smear of oily tomato sauce. It was an initiatory moment before an endless departure.  

Tizi’s dad took a plate. Also her mother. Tizi just said no. I did too. The term “mouth feel” had not yet been coined, but I was told to expect rubber. Endless departure delay.

Last night Tizi begged off. Anna begged off. To be polite I told Mirko I’d try it.   

Tripe is a cow’s stomach lining, from its fourth and final stomach. It stews for a long time.  They cook the hell out of it. First it requires rigorous cleaning. When I read up on this cleaning, the first step was “using a knife scrape away any impurities.”  I clicked away.

“It’s street food in Florence, you know,” Mirko said, “At one time men pushed carts with pots of lampredotto. They made sandwiches of it. You ate on the go.” In fact, I think I had one of those famous Florentine sandwiches once at the Florence Mercato Centrale, at a stand called da Nerbone, with a four-ounce glass of red wine, at ten o’clock in the morning. And it was good. 

The tripe we ate last night was stewed in tomato sauce, that being the regional approach. Mirko said he’d had it white too. Well, all I could think was ew. Tomato can make things taste good.

It was chewy. It was rubbery. The sauce mopped up with bread was delicious. The tripe? Mirko was in heaven. Me, not so much. It’s most definitely a mouth-feel thing. An acquired taste thing. Unfortuntately I have only one stomach. Possibly stewed fourth and final stomach of cow needs more than one stomach to digest. When I got up this morning, my stomach felt funny. Was it still in there? After while the feeling passed.

Next time tripe comes along, I’ll probably pass.