Tripe by any other name....

The fantastic andoulette sausage that I had at Le Paris in Montreal motivates the following question....How many different types of tripe are there? The andoulette sausage, which claims to be tripe sausage, is nothing like the menudo that I get at Tacos el Norte, which is nothing like tripe soup in France. I am guessing that the Andoulette is actually stuffed with intestine, or chitlins, since it seems to be much thinner and flat. I have had it several times in France, and vaguely seem to remember one menu translating it as chitterling sausage. I think that the french tripe soup, which I made here once, is the white stomach material, thicker and spongier with all the little flap-things, that you see in the grocery store (ok, some grocery stores). It is the Mexican version that has me most befuddled. I have only had it twice, and I thought it was pretty foul... big lumps of chewy fat. Did I just get crappy menudo, or is it always like that, and if so, what tripe are they using?
Thanks, Will

And while we're on the subject, does anyone know if pickled tripe is available in Chicago? My mother in law (from MA) loves fried pickled tripe, and we've never been able to find pickled tripe to make it for her when she's here. (And I would like to try it once.)

Andouillette is very hard to find in Chicago. I have found it at Fox & Obel @ about $18 /lb; pricey but exactly as you remember it. I have contacted several sausage manufacturers in Chicago and environs about it to no avail. Your description is correct as it is well cleaned pieces of tripe stuffed with garlic and spices into a casing.
Menudo uses loose, and large, pieces of tripe which absorb a lot of liquid to give the texture you did not appreciate. You might want to try a tripas taco in which the texture will be very different, as the pieces are small and fried.
Although I have never seen it in Chicago, Tripe a la mode de Caen, a Normandy (I think) dish finished with calvados is excellent with even a different texture.
If you a searching for an edgy experience, the tripe at Rinconcito Sudamericano(Peruvian) and at Bahay Kubo(Fillipino) in Roselle will test your Chowhound chops.
Nearly all cuisines use tripe in some manner. Are there any other tripe sausages? Are there any in Chicagoland?
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WillG wrote:The fantastic andoulette sausage that I had at Le Paris in Montreal motivates the following question....How many different types of tripe are there? The andoulette sausage, which claims to be tripe sausage, is nothing like the menudo that I get at Tacos el Norte, which is nothing like tripe soup in France. I am guessing that the Andoulette is actually stuffed with intestine, or chitlins, since it seems to be much thinner and flat. I have had it several times in France, and vaguely seem to remember one menu translating it as chitterling sausage. I think that the french tripe soup, which I made here once, is the white stomach material, thicker and spongier with all the little flap-things, that you see in the grocery store (ok, some grocery stores). It is the Mexican version that has me most befuddled. I have only had it twice, and I thought it was pretty foul... big lumps of chewy fat. Did I just get crappy menudo, or is it always like that, and if so, what tripe are they using?
Thanks, Will

There are many regional varieties of andouille and andouillette in France, and a number of them include chitterlings. How was the andouillette you had in Montreal prepared? Here are a couple of common and very appealing ways:

Andouillette à la moutarde de Meaux:
http://www.lamarmite.com/index_r0238.php

Andouillette lyonnaise:
http://o.maley.free.fr/lyonnaiseries/andouill.htm

Incidentally, there is at least one festival of andouillette, namely in Arras (northernmost France); I'm going to be in the neighbourhood and would love to attend but don't know exactly if and when there is one this year. The following webpage was for last year's festival (29 August); I need to poke around the web some more:

Arras, Fête de l'Andouillette:
http://assoc.wanadoo.fr/nordmag/nord_pa ... llette.htm

***

I love tripe and the tripe à la mode de Caen, mentioned by MLS, is one of the great recipes in the world. The way I have generally consumed tripe is alla Romana, that is, Roman style, which is tripe cooked in a sauce of tomatoes and served with a heap of pecorino on the side. There are different types of beef or veal tripe, corresponding to the different stomachs of the beast, and these each have their own flavour (maybe) and especially texture, namely, flat, honeycomb and leaf. Honeycomb offers the most frightening or at least weird visual aspect to the unfamilar but it is the most tender type. Usually, as least in my experience, there is a mix of types used in most recipes.

Tripe is delicious if prepared well but prepared poorly, it can be inedible. Thorough cleaning (nowadays, it is sold already with most of the cleaning done), careful trimming and cutting and very slow cooking are all required before you get to the fun part of any recipe. As it cooks, it doesn't smell all that good either, but thinking about it, I'm filled with nostalgia for the atmosphere (including occasional weird smells) of my mother's and grandmother's kitchens.*

Antonius

* Scungillë, 'conch', is another odd smelling item that requires long cooking.

Speaking of tripe, at a festival benefitting one of Windsor's Catholic churches in the heart of that town's little italy this weekend, nearly every food vendor was selling trippa. We didn't sample, but had a quite lovely meal at one of the many restaurants in the area. Some excellent gelato at a nearby cafe rounded out a very nice evening.

For kl5: Isn't it funny what previous generations long for. On the way to our "second honeymoon" almost 20 years ago to my uncle's cottage in N. Michigan, I told Himself we needed to stop to buy provisions. As we were walking from the parking lot into the Glen's Supermarket (local chain) I said something like, they'll probably have lots of pickled bologna.

Himself was clueless (well, it had only been 5 years:-) So I attempted to explain the MI thing about ring bologna, pickled bologna, bologna salad, and I could tell he thought I was as nuts as when I made him stop on our "first" honeymoon for a HoJo's clam roll.

We walk in, there it is, a 5 foot high pyramid of gallon jars of pickled ring bologna.

He has come to trust me on local foodways

GWiv should weigh in with a post from another food board that I can't find about the garrigue (sp) taste of some intrepid eaters of andouillettes (sp?). It is to laugh.

annieb wrote:Wiv should weigh in with a post from another food board that I can't find about the garrigue (sp) taste of some intrepid eaters of andouillettes (sp?). It is to laugh.

Annieb,

I'm guessing you mean Burke & Wells

Enjoy,
Gary

Paprikash Restaurant has Pacalporkolt, which can be loosely translated as "tripe goulash." Basically, it's thin slices of tripe stewed in onions, garlic, paprika, and perhaps some caraway seed. Very yummy.

Also, most Polish restaurants should serve flaki, a Polish tripe soup served in a beef broth often flavored with marjoram.

Binko's post reminded me of something I left out of my previous post in this thread. I have now and again seen tripe on some (non-Mexican) restaurants around town, most recently at Salerno's on Grand, just east of Ogdan. I would have tried it but it was Lent at the time and I didn't want to risk eternal damnation for a bowl of tripe. I'm not sure how they do it there but I would bet it is a Calabrian recipe.

Antonius

Binko wrote:
Also, most Polish restaurants should serve flaki, a Polish tripe soup served in a beef broth often flavored with marjoram.

In my experiences on the NW side of Chicago, most places DO serve flaki. Halina's makes an especially good version.

Now, I wonder is this tripe or as the Mexicans would say, tripas, that is, chitterling? The flaki I've had has been fattier and multi-dimensional textually than plain old honeycomb tripe (a/k/a menudo).

Rob

annieb wrote:We walk in, there it is, a 5 foot high pyramid of gallon jars of pickled ring bologna.

Annieb: I am originally from (Saginaw) Michigan and was just there, sans husband, this weekend for a visit and a baby shower. I bought a jar of Koegel's pickled bologna on my way out of town for my husband, who has never met a preserved meat he didn't like. To my chagrin, he was very skeptical. But I sliced some up at breakfast (!) this morning and I think I won him over. I told him I would buy the red hot next time and he perked up even more. That the whole world doesn't know the joys of pickled ring bologna is their loss and our guilty secret. (And it's not as scary as the pickled pigs' feet my mom often craves!)

Kristen

Vital Information wrote:

Binko wrote:
Also, most Polish restaurants should serve flaki, a Polish tripe soup served in a beef broth often flavored with marjoram.

In my experiences on the NW side of Chicago, most places DO serve flaki. Halina's makes an especially good version.

Now, I wonder is this tripe or as the Mexicans would say, tripas, that is, chitterling? The flaki I've had has been fattier and multi-dimensional textually than plain old honeycomb tripe (a/k/a menudo).

Rob

No, flaki is definitely tripe. We used to make it at home all the time. I've actually never had chitterlings, so I can't give you a comparison between the two, but I've always though chitterlings were thinner and less textural than tripe.

Here's a typical image of flaki:

the andouillette in Montreal was very similar to the times that I have had it in france, simply grilled sausage (one was burst wide open, the other intact), served basically plain, in this case with frites and good moutard on the side. It was stuffed with what I assume to be pork chitterlings, or fairly (1/8 inch) thick (relative to casing intestine) but flat pieces of intestine, clearly not ground up, mixed with some spices, most noticable was the garlic, with a bit of heat. The sausage itself was a bit oily, but in a good way, as opposed to having big lumps of fat.I suppose that this could be the stomach of the pig, if pig stomachs are a relatively thin, flat material as opposed to the thick honeycomb of the cow stomach.
i am still not sure what it is about the tripe (presumably actual cow stomach, as opposed to intestine) that I like in french versions, with the honeycomb peices that dont seem fatty, and the mexican version, which seems to me to just be big hunks of fat, with no honeycomb.
-Will

I took a few notes on the tripe and tripas today at Cermak Produce. They had three varieties labeled menudo: blanco (honeycomb) at $2.97/lb., moreno (regular) at $0.79/lb. and librillo de res (no English adjective or name) at $1.89. I don't know which cow stomach produces which type, but there is quite a price spread and they look quite different. The tripas des res (beef intestines) were $2.39/lb.

This was the Cermak Produce in the 4200 block of North Kedzie. This store is larger than some of their others and carries a wider range of products. As we were checking out I noted that they had three brands of malta, one in two bottle sizes, in a display near the cash registers.