The Trippa Advisor is back! Working in translation, reinterpretation, poetic license, and above all, tripe. This week he comes to you with a recipe, a new experience, and a few words about youth. Once again thank you Andrea Calori for writing the original text in Italian, I hope my “translation” does you proud.
LA PRIMA VOLTA
Ci sono stagioni della vita in cui tutto è una "prima volta". La prima birra, la prima sigaretta, la prima sc***ta, d’altra parte l’adolescenza è anche e soprattutto questo.Si perde poi, col tempo, l’abitudine a vivere delle prime volte e ci si ritrova nel loop in cui viviamo tutti i giorni. Capita anche e soprattutto in cucina. Se cucini spesso a casa, infatti, avrai sicuramente le tue buone abitudini di routine e conosci questo circolo vizioso. Alcuni potrebbero chiamarlo comfort food, altri pigrizia, ma comunque ti ritroverai molto spesso a fare gli stessi piatti, sempre con gli stessi ingredienti, gli stessi utensili, le stesse tecniche. Spesso sono piatti pure un po’ di merda. Per me è la pasta rosa, il megapasticcio di patate, la pizza surgelata rinforzata. Roba che mangi senza neanche guardarla.
A volte però entra in gioco qualcosa di intrinseco e quasi selvaggio, animale: la curiosità culinaria. Quella voglia irrefrenabile di voler sperimentare una nuova ricetta o di voler cucinare un nuovo ingrediente, dopo averne goduto in qualche ristorante o trattoria, dopo averne sentito parlare da qualche parte, probabilmente in una tipica cena fra italiani in cui il più frequente argomento è, ovviamente, il cibo, o forse per nessun motivo preciso. Solo fame, ma fame di qualcosa di nuovo.
Così una sera di Dicembre, a cena con amici, parlando dei migliori piatti forti delle nostre rispettive nonne, viene fuori che la nonna di Jack fa un’incredibile piatto di trippa.
“Come cazzo è possibile che io non abbia mai cucinato la trippa?!” penso. “Domani sera venite qui a cena, cucino la trippa!” dico.
La mattina dopo, una domenica, zero esitazioni. Ho un libro a casa che si chiama “Troppa Trippa” (grazie, Jake Mike Boy), ma no: oggi non seguo ricette. Oggi scrivo la mia storia d’amore con la trippa.Macellaio. Ottocento grammi di trippa. Passata di pomodoro. La Santa Trinità (cipolla, sedano, carota). Pecorino. Menta. E patate, perché, penso, un po’ di amido potrebbe fare comodo.
Si parte: la trippa lessa per quaranta minuti. Nel frattempo, il sugo – Trinità soffritta nel grasso di prosciutto (sì, il grasso: la trippa è magra, ma noi vogliamo un piatto ricco, sugnoso, il grasso fa godere). Pomodoro, poi le patate sbollentate. Quando la trippa è pronta, via l’acqua e dentro il vino a sfumare. Poi tutto insieme, trippa e sugo, e giù una manciata di menta fresca. Dopodichè: godete.
Abbiate cura di mangiarla in buona compagnia, accompagnata da un bel vino rosso. Vi darà quella sensazione di abbraccio e di sentirsi nel posto in cui bisogna essere che poche cose al mondo riescono a dare.
La trippa è così, come quell’amico che non vedi mai, ma quando vi ritrovate è come se non vi foste mai lasciati.
A FIRST TRIPE FOR EVERYTHING
Life used to have firsts, remember? The first beer, the first cigarette, the first fuck. This is what adolescence was all about. Discovery. Brand new sensation. And then, over time, we do it all and we do it all again. Firsts become seconds become repeat offenses. We find ourselves stuck in a loop, every experience the same, even more so in the kitchen.
If you cook often, you probably have routine habits. I know I do. I’m all too familiar with the vicious cycle some call comfort food and others call laziness. The same dishes, the same ingredients, the same techniques. Most often it’s not in pursuit of perfection; most often these meals turn out limp and grey. The passionless hand is not known for precise measures.
My most routine dishes are pasta alla rosa and frozen pizza with anchovies applied before going in the oven. Meals that require no thought at all. Bullshit you eat without even looking at.
I can exist in this dissociative fugue state for months at a time, until something wild and animal stirs in the depths of my soul. I don’t know what to call it. Culinary curiosity is too feeble a phrase. It’s more like an uncontrollable urge. The urge to try a new recipe, to use a new ingredient, to discover a brand new sensation like those of my youth. Surely, you’ve felt it too.
Maybe it comes to you after enjoying a dish of deep fried tripe at a famous Milanese trattoria. A tripe so airy it ceases to exist after you bite into it; there's the crunch and then there's nothing. Or maybe you hit your routine limit over the millionth slice of bland, tasteless, pizza perched in front of the television. You throw it to the floor, rejecting Dr. Oetker’s monotonous prescription. Basta.
Or maybe a nonna snaps you out of it. Wouldn’t that be delectably Italian? That’s what happened to me last December. It was dinner with friends, the conversation turned to food over a digestive grappa and like any drunk Europeans, we started laying claim to our heritage. Whose grandma makes the best what, who fought where in WWII, that kind of talk. Someone was boldly professing that their nonna prepares the most delicious trippa in all of Piemonte when a realization hit me like a brick.
I’ve never cooked tripe before.
I let out a cry so loud it woke the neighborhood. How have I, the so-called Trippa Advisor of the so-called world, never cooked tripe before? An embarrassing sense of anguish flooded my whole body. Soon the anguish was replaced by the curiosity of adolescence.
I looked my dinner companions dead in their stomachs and declared my solution to this shameful revelation. “Come for dinner tomorrow night. I’ll cook tripe!”
The next morning was Sunday but I didn’t go to church. I have over one hundred cookbooks but I didn’t use them. No. No hesitation. No formulas. I was writing my love story with trippa like only I knew how. I was feeling my way through it.
At the butcher, eight hundred grams of tripe. At the grocery, tomato puree, the holy trinity, pecorino, mint. And potatoes, because a little starch is always good.
The procedure, if you can call a first date a procedure, went like this: the tripe boiled for forty minutes while I sautéed Trinità in prosciutto fat (tripe is lean, but we want a rich, succulent dish; fat is good for you.) Next I added tomato, then blanched potatoes. When the tripe was boiled enough, I tossed the water and simmered it in wine. Finally, I mixed everything together, tripe and sauce, with a handful of fresh mint.
I cannot give you further instruction, the same way I can’t instruct you on the art of seduction. What I will say is, you have to enjoy it. Open yourself to a new experience. Inhale your first cigarette. If this is your first time cooking tripe, make sure to eat it in good company. Drink an entire bottle of Barolo together, or at least a Barbaresco. The meal will embrace you, warmly, like a new sensation with a familiar touch.
Ahh!
Tripe, to me, is a friend I’ve never met but always joked with, a star-crossed lover I’ve been waiting to hold in my arms. When our paths finally crossed in the kitchen I felt like I had known her all along. We fit. We went together. The first time wasn’t the last.
Love was born anew.
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Thank you Jake for the opportunity to share trippa love with the community
It’s a lifelong love affair. Sometimes you forget about him, but you always end up at his door. That craggy flesh will be in my stew pot soon. Never tried it with mint. Look forward to it.