BS: Tripe - The foodstuff

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Thompson
Date: 28 Jan 21 - 11:39 AM

Or rather not where they're from, but what breed they are.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 28 Jan 21 - 12:27 PM

I just coughed up and spat down the bog
something that reminded me of my only ever encounter with oysters...

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 28 Jan 21 - 01:32 PM

I do quite like oysters but they always pose the question as to who decided to take a rock out of the sea, split it open and suck the snot from it :-D

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Jos
Date: 28 Jan 21 - 01:41 PM

You can improve the texture of oysters by cooking them.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Charmion
Date: 29 Jan 21 - 07:58 AM

The eating of oysters is one of those “two kinds of people” things. I was introduced to them at the age of eight, and have always considered them a great treat, especially when served with a lemon wedge and a flinty-dry wine such as Chablis.

I think what makes a person like oysters is an olfactory system that responds well to bitter and acid flavours, so the mineral character of the taste and smell stands out.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Charmion
Date: 29 Jan 21 - 11:05 AM

Dave the Gnome, I think the first oyster-cracker might have been some guy who had the opportunity to observe a sea otter at work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUY0s-Y5lkE

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 29 Jan 21 - 11:42 AM

When I was a kid in the 1960s, convenience food for quick sandwiches consisted frequently
of cheap tinned pilchards in tomato sauce, & sardines.
Jars of salmon, crab, shrimp, and other processed fishy flavour pastes..

Meals of Kippers, and smoked haddock..

Sunday teatime treats of tinned salmon mashed with onion and vinegar sandwiches.
Seaside holiday snacks of jars of cockles..

I ate all that because it's what busy working class mum had meagre time and money to provide..

In my pretentious teens I could tolerate mussels in garlic sauce
whilst trying to keep up with a middle class girlfriend..

Sword fish steaks in Corfu confounded me, because they looked like yummy pork chops
but tasted so fishy, they made me gag...


Since then I've not enjoyed any seafoods except good traditional bland cod n chips,
and tuna heavily flavoured with garlic, chilli.
or any other savoury flavours that stop it tasting like fish...

I'll continue to take a pass on Sushi...

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Donuel
Date: 29 Jan 21 - 03:26 PM

I won't touch mussels or oysters on looks alone but before swordfish became nearly extinct and -fried in a red hot iron pan- it tasted like beef to me, same with blue fin tuna. My parents grew up in the Depression and they called me little Lord Fauntelroy when I turned my nose up at Tongue and Lima Beans.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Jos
Date: 29 Jan 21 - 05:12 PM

We often had tongue when I was growing up. It was delicate and delicious.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 29 Jan 21 - 06:26 PM

Tongue? You can't lick it.

Eggs? You can't beat 'em.

Swordfish? I had it in Amalfi and wasn't keen. I bought some here and cooked it - same thing. I like all fish in general (we had red gurnard for tea last Saturday - glorious!), but swordfish I found to be a bit too rich and salty. Can't like everything!

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 30 Jan 21 - 01:51 PM

Man in a cafe "What's today's special?"

"Ox tongue" replies the waiter.

"Yeuk! I'm not having something that's been in a cows mouth. Bring me a couple of boiled eggs"

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Thompson
Date: 30 Jan 21 - 01:54 PM

Oh, God, yes, fresh (and identifiable by breed) oysters with a slice of lemon and a flinty Chablis, Charmian; and in Ireland some fresh-made brown soda bread and cool salty butter. Traditionally they're eaten with Guinness on the side, but I prefer the Chablis.
I tasted a very nice oyster dish in le Dôme restaurant in Paris, cooked in a kind of creamy cheesy sauce. I'd been too chicken to order oysters myself, even though they assured me they were a French breed, not the Pacific invaders, but a fellow-diner gave me one to taste; boy, was I sorry I hadn't ordered them!

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 30 Jan 21 - 02:05 PM

I've now remembered eating squid in Italian Restaurants in my youth,
when I was striving to be upwardly socially mobile
with that middle class girlfriend...

I don't recall if squid had any flavour...???

Thank the foodie gods I eventually settled down with my mrs,
a down to earth sausage, pies, mash, chips, and gravy loving girl
from the South Wales valleys...

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: JennieG
Date: 30 Jan 21 - 10:10 PM

Way back when I was young (and slender.....sigh) oysters were served at a friend's wedding dinner. Having never eaten them before I thought "what the heck" and did so. They went down all right, but sadly came back up again a few hours later with much discomfort.

Forward twenty years or so and I tried oysters again, with the same result.

Since then, oysters and I leave each other alone.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Rusty Dobro
Date: 31 Jan 21 - 03:52 AM

I used to have to visit a Polish ship first thing in the mornings to check the crew lists, and when I finished, I was always given a dish of tripe cooked in milk. It would have been rude to refuse, but all these years later, I wonder if it was a ghastly practical joke.........

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Rapparee
Date: 31 Jan 21 - 07:10 PM

I've tried tripe but just can't stomach it.

Now, in my youth all the taverns had pickled pigs' tails in a big jar on the bar. Looked like a jar of preserved pink snakes. I didn't have any of those either.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 31 Jan 21 - 07:21 PM

That reminds me of the suspected horse's willy that was served up at Mrs Miggin's pie shop in Blackadder...

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Feb 21 - 08:54 PM

Calf fries and lamb fries are big with some folks out here in The Far West. You take the animal and hogtie it, brand it, vaccinate it, ear tag it, and cut away those parts that make it male. Those are then roasted in the branding fire "until they pop." Supposed to be good eatin'. Not exactly my idea of a good meal, but some folks like 'em.

Yes, sheep are branded as well as cattle. Exactly how I don't know, as the fleece would result in a "hair brand."

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: robomatic
Date: 01 Feb 21 - 09:20 PM

There are more than one commemmorative cookouts for rocky mountain oysters. And let us not forget the
testicle festival

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 04 Feb 21 - 08:12 AM

Funny what we will or won't eat, innit? I love kidneys, which exist mainly to make piss. I'll eat a nice rump steak, cut from a cows arse. I'll even eat its tail, which spent all its life spattered in dried shit and swishing away bluebottles. I love pig's cheek done in a carbonara, though it spent its life crunching up roots dug up from among its own turds. I'll eat its skin (scratchings, crackling), even though that skin spent its life rolling around in swine ordure and may be presented to me with nipple and anus included. I'll drink milk (and eat the cream and cheese made therefrom) gleaned from a rather dirty set of tits situated pretty close to and not exactly uninfluenced by the cow's bummel...

I'll eat prawns yet heave at the very thought of eating those fat white wriggly grubs you see people scoffing on the telly. But how different are they really? I'll instantly turn up my nose at the suggestion that I could have brains or testicles for tea. Yet those bits are kept wrapped up, protected and clean, for the whole of the beast's life... Rational, moi?

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Raedwulf
Date: 05 Feb 21 - 01:58 PM

Who would ever accuse you of being rational, Steve? :p Sorry, but we seem to be falling over each other here... you slightly before me. ;-)

In the broad sense, I love tripe. In the specific sense, I've never had it. A friend, whose judgement I respect, said much the same about tripe and snails - "They taste of what you cook them with". Since garlic seems to be the standard flavouring for snails, I don't suppose I ever will! Tripe? Maybe.

In the broader sense, tripe is... the organs, I suppose. Not even the lesser cuts of meat. Rump is still muscle; oxtail, scrag end of neck, ditto... As with many a child, I didn't like liver much ("More bacon, Mum!"). Childrens' palettes are more inclined to sweet flavours than bitter ones (oddly, I've always like sprouts); as an adult, I DO like liver. I love kidneys. There's probably no way you could cook kidneys* that I wouldn't enjoy. Heart I've never had (as far as I know). It's not that they're not freely available, I've just never felt like indulging in the long slow cooking time. Mum used to make a wonderful sweetbread stew. Never had brains or eyeballs (I imagine they're much like snails & tripe). What else counts as tripe? I love black pudding; I will always try whatever local variant of BP there is; and haggis (lungs+) ditto.

But I've never tried tripe. Southerner. I suppose that's it... ;-)

*Except, obviously, with garlic!

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Jos
Date: 05 Feb 21 - 02:27 PM

I like heart - usually lamb's heart these days, but my m0ther used to get an ox heart and fill it with stuffing (parsley, thyme, breadcrumbs ...). It would be carved like a joint.
I used to get ox liver but I never see it these days, so I usually have lamb's liver, not keen on pig's liver though.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Raggytash
Date: 05 Feb 21 - 04:27 PM

Many years ago, when we were skint, I used to go to Oldham market and buy a beast heart and roast it for Sunday lunch .........one cos it was the only beef I could afford and two because it was bloody good!

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 05 Feb 21 - 06:45 PM

Wasn't it pathetic when some over sensitive marketing dickhead
insisted they must change the long established name of "Brains Faggots"...

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Jack Campin
Date: 05 Feb 21 - 07:51 PM

The idea of roasting testicles until they pop sounds a bit scary. In the abbatoir one of the tools I had was a long iron hook with a pointed tip - this was mainly used for fishing out sets of intestines that had missed their intended tray on the conveyor and rolled underneath among the machinery. Testicles occasionally fell off too. It took a hard whack with the hook to burst their tough membrane, but when you did the tissue inside burped out like an enormous zit popping. You wouldn't want to be nearby if the burst was under steam pressure. Having to go through life explaining how you lost your eye to a flying dollop of scalding testicle might be embarrassing.

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 05 Feb 21 - 08:49 PM

Are you talking bollocks here, Jack?

Subject: RE: BS: Tripe - The foodstuff
From: Raedwulf
Date: 06 Feb 21 - 04:13 PM

I think it may count as cojones, rather than simple bollocks, Steve... ;-)