Tripe
I saw this sign a couple of days ago. So struck by it was I that I went back the following day just to photograph it. A sign lovingly written and carefully blue-tacked into the window of our local butcher’s. It refers to the newly reinstated sale of stomach offal (due, possibly but unfeasibly, to popular demand).
Note the grille on the windows. Is this delicacy so rare and highly sought-after that it has to be protected? And now I imagine a vault inside, guarded with laser beams and other high-tech paraphenalia, like the crown jewels. Perhaps they have their own version of beefeaters – the tripe-eaters.
The word tripe takes me back to my childhood. You could say it’s a “tripe down memory lane” for me (if you were perhaps devoid of all comedy genes, that is). I remember different types, different colours and different textures, all bought from a local market stall, all eaten raw, all about as appetising as an eskimo’s scrotum.
I tried it and knew I didn’t like it, thus consigning it forever to that list of things “faddy lad” won’t eat.
I have been tormented in my life for not liking fish, or shellfish, or pancakes, or turnip, amongst many. But surely we can build a consensus on tripe. Can’t we…?
"Seconds? Ooh, no, I couldn't possibly..."
Do you have food fads which you’ve carried with you since childhood? Which foods would you never eat, even if someone threatened to kill a kitten every ten minutes until you did? And am I doing eskimo scrotums a disservice?
As a teenager I existed entirely on fried egg and salad cream sandwiches. They are still my occasional late night snack of choice. Divine.
Looks truly delightful. Are you sure you’re supposed to eat it raw though? And perhaps you should give it one more chance – I can see a live vlog in there somewhere…
I’d join a ‘what is the point of tripe?’ club. I’m not usually one to worry what something looks like providing it tastes delicious but having been in my aunt’s house once when tripe was being cooked I think I’d rather eat the dish cloth it resembled!
You eat it raw!!?! I don’t eat shellfish – prawns look too much like insects and shrimps look like peeled little toes. I have never liked marzipan and still don’t. Don’t like peppermint flavour unless cleaning my teeth with it. All other childhood dislikes have been aquired e.g. brussel sprouts now taste good.
I’m afraid in the part of Manchester where I come from, tripe has never gone away. My dear departed mother ate it as a delicacy (though it wasn’t the thing that killed her), along with cow heel and pig’s trotters – boiled, cooled and drowned (presumably to hide the taste) in lashings of malt vinegar.
I was one served calves foot jelly at someone’s house for dinner. It’s ok if you take tiny bits at a time. The taste is sort of meaty you just have to get past the fact that it’s jelly.
Urghhhh – my Mother is a tripe fan, but it is white (or yellow) and wobbly and looks like baby milk vomit, especially when cooked in milk with onions. I have finally conceded to eat 2 sprouts with lunch on Christmas day, and Parsnips are the work of the devil – Sugar in a brew is just wrong, and the worst crime of all and most disgusting thing I can think of is butter or margarine on a jam butty – jam and bread don’t need all that salty slimy grease. there. My two-peneth!
There’s a stall in Leeds market that sells nothing but tripe. Every time I pass it I do a little shudder.
There are some things that i think I’d never eat – dog, cat, horse, hare, insects. All cultural things, obviously, as I know they’re eaten happily by other folk. Oh, and olives. Horrible things.
Even though I’ve reached the point in my life where I’m telling my kids that if they never try something then they’ll never know if they like it, I’m still avoiding stuff I’ve never tried…do as I say, not as I do, is my motto!
Tripe is just offal – really offal! (Someone had to).
I ate loads of the stuff when growing up (in NZ), & continued to cook it even after leaving home. Boil it for 3 hours then eat with a white sauce. I liked it!
For me its baked potato from the microwave, the smell of it, the thought of it, turns my stomach. However I know why! When I was about 14 I was responsible for cooking dinner for my younger siblings when Mum was a work. She would set out what needed doing and baked potato was an easy dish.
On this particular afternoon, my sister didn’t fancy hers so being a greedy pig I ate both. Later that night, I was taken ill, admitted to hospital and in the early hours of the morning had my appendix removed.
Forever in my mind there will be a direct link with microwaved baked potato and surgery!
I can never eat Tongue. But, to
My utmost horreur I ate it as a child. Sunday tea at my
Nanna’s house. If it wasn’t roast dinner, it’d be a ‘cold tea’. Lovely salad, MEAT, pickles, boiled eggs which I, as the oldest, was allowed to slice in her fancy pants egg slicer, cheese ( always Lancashire Creamy Mild ) and plain crisps from Marks n Spencers. Delicious. I wasn’t that keen on the ‘ Rachel eat your meat’ meat and now I know why. It was Tongue. Cows use their tongues to lick themselves. Ugh. Shudder udder !
I’m with you on the Tripe – it just looks so vile! I also used to grotsquely fascinated with tongue in the butchers – yeuch, but I couldn’t stop looking at it!
I’m better at trying stuff now than I used to be, but I will not eat mince and gravy. I hated it as a kd and still do now!
Ewwww! When we first got our boxer dog she was being weaned on tripe. The breeder handed her over to me along with a bag of tripe. Over the next few days I cooked this vile tripe. The smell turned my stomach and when the breeder popped over to see how our new puppy was settling in I told him “She is fine but I’m not sure I can keep cooking this tripe every day…the smell is putrid!” He laughed and replied “You dont cook the stuff, its eaten raw!”
Coming from a long line of Eastenders the food from my youth is Jellied eels…Bleugh! I never have understood the love of them.
Tripe is obviously a Northern thing. Apart from around here, the only other place I’ve seen it is in Barcelona on tapas menus and we had a very near miss because the pic looked quite appetising and then I looked it up, thankfully in time. That’s Northern Spain.
Anyway, my lifelong hate has been rhubarb. I am fairly sure that it is a family thing and honestly, I have really tried it several times but it just doesn’t taste right to me. And I’m the woman who likes olives, fish and shellfish. And marmite!
Good lord a vegetarians worst nightmare! Did remind me of my Grandad though! I definitely have brought good old welsh rarebit with me!
Although the whole idea of eating stomach of…well…anything, is abhorrent to me, I once was stuck waiting for a bus at 3AM during a “shoe-string budget” trip from Honduras to Guatemala city and there was nothing else to eat. I ate a bowl of mondongo (tripe) soup that was quite tasty. You’ll never see me do that again in the future unless the circumstances are very similar.
I will say that it’s much better than armadillo… but that’s enough of my war stories for now.
Very humorous post, North.
When I was about 20 I was in Rouen alone, waiting to catch a train, a penniless student. I found a restaurant I could just about afford, but it was a strange little place run by a creepy old woman who also did the cooking. The menu was hand written, and I could not decipher most of it. But I did spot the words “d’agneau”. “What could possibly go wrong with lamb?” I asked myself. It was an odd dish. It tasted like lamb, sure enough, but it was soft and squishy. Gradually it dawned on me that the full title of the dish was “Cervelles d’agneau”. Lambs brains!!!! Never again.
I was in Florence last year. There is a stall in the market which sells nothing but tripe. Tripe is common on the on the menus of restaurants, many of these restaurants are recommended in guidebooks. There are fast food stalls which sell tripe in buns for office workers. Tripe is a normal well loved food in Tuscany. It used to be in here. Does no one remember the UCP cafes which always sold it. It is beginning to make a come back. Now even supermarkets are beginning to sell it. Learn to love it. Its delicious