by Cathy Erway
We had a round of coffee before my guests tiptoed over to the pot of menudo on the stove. I’d made sure to remove the trotter before they came. Aaron stared into the pot.
“So that’s tripe, huh?” he said.
It looked a lot more appealing now that it had been cooked than the strange white stuff I’d chopped the day before. The tripe squares were so light, they came floating to the surface of the stew easily with the stir of a spoon. I scooped out portions into individual bowls for everyone and garnished the tops with sprigs of cilantro. Brunch was served.
“Mm,” Mai said, taking a slurp of the broth alone. “What did you do to make the soup?”
I told her about the extraneous pork bone, leaving out the fact that it had actually been a foot, rather than just a bone.
Jordan coughed on her next sip. She cleared her throat. “This is spicy,” she said, her eyes reddening.
“Yeah, but it’s kind of waking me up,” Aaron said. “I can see how something with a really good kick would do that, for a hangover. Actually, that’s a pretty good metaphor. It has kick.”
We all nodded. Even though the tripe was very tender by then, it was still a chewy, springy little piece of offal. It needed to be worked on for a while with the molars before it gave way and broke into separate chunks. I didn’t find the texture unappealing, though; this need to chew, while savoring the flavor that it had been steeped in, was a trait I’d always loved about dim sum braised tripe before. I dipped my piece of bread into the reddish, spicy broth. Everyone soon followed suit.
“I can’t believe I’m eating this,” Jordan said after a brief silence.
“Mm, the soup is really good,” Mai said.
“I’m actually liking the tripe a bit, and the hominy? Is that what these things are?” Aaron asked, holding up his spoon.
“Yep. They eat a lot of hominy in Mexico, apparently,” I explained. “But for some reason, not so much here. It’s a good way of preserving corn.”
“I see.”
We continued to slurp until, miraculously, all our plates were empty. I hadn’t been sure if my friends would take to the dish—probably because I had been the one who had seen and worked with the strange ingredients, in all their raw glory. I had expected a little more hesitation and perhaps a couple of dislikes. I didn’t think anyone was making an extra effort to be polite, either. I knew for a fact that Jordan would put down her spoon and be quite content not eating something if she found that it was not to her liking. But her plate was cleared just as well as anyone else’s.
The thing about tripe is that it doesn’t really have a particular taste. It’s all texture—weird, blubbery texture—but tastewise, it is completely benign. So traditionally whenever it’s cooked, it’s stewed for long hours with savory broths and spices, so it soaks up that flavor. What we were eating basically tasted like red chili pork broth-soaked sponges. Which was actually quite nice, especially for a hangover.
“I’m actually starting to feel a bit better now,” Jordan said.
“It worked?” Aaron asked her. She nodded, smiling for the first time that morning.
“I’m going to go for seconds,” he said.
After the four of us had seconds, there was no more menudo left to go around. In the end, we concluded, it was probably the rich, savory spiciness plus the warm soupiness of the dish that had eased our hangovers the most. I wasn’t sure the tripe itself was integral to this. We could have been eating spicy chicken soup or any other type of meat prepared in the same way.
I felt a great pride in my friends right then for doing what Mike D. and even his wife never dared to—eating the actual tripe. It wasn’t so bad, really, once you got used to the new texture. It was completely different from any other texture in the world, sure, but that was what was so great about food anyway, that it could vary so endlessly.
After we’d filled our stomachs with menudo and bread and had another round of coffees, the four of us tried to retrace our steps from the previous night. It was fun to recall the fuzzy details we’d nearly forgotten, like rubbing clear a fogged window and catching new glimpses with each swipe. Why had we thought coconut rum and vodka would go well together? Why was I talking about the stage adaptation of John Waters’s Cry-Baby with someone—and who was that with, anyway? Slowly, we began to fill in the blanks. There had even been a little skirmish with the police at one point, when a guest stepped outside onto the front stoop and got ticketed for holding a bottle of beer outside.
This was a classic hangover, healed. I was convinced then that I had discovered the best way to remedy that old morning-after affliction, and I would follow it as much as possible—if not with tripe, then at least with something spicy and soothing. The key was to also spend the day with friends, filling our stomachs with something—anything. And, perhaps, to experience new foods, or new cuts of an animal, and breaking down those cuts from a raw state yourself. Well, this last part was probably best saved for a clear, nonhungover state of mind.
Sarah’s Super-Secret Menudo
This recipe is actually improvised from the one that my coworker gave me, written by his wife, Sarah. I added one pork trotter to the broth to give it extra flavor; for the faint of heart, a few pork soup bones can be used instead.
(MAKES ABOUT 4-6 SERVINGS)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
5-6 cloves garlic, minced
Salt and pepper to taste
1 pork trotter (or substitute 3-4 pork bones)
½ cup red chili powder2
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon cumin
1 bunch cilantro, chopped
1½ pounds honeycomb beef tripe, cut into 1-2 inch squares (they’ll shrink)
2 cans hominy, drained and rinsed
In a large pot, heat the oil and sweat the onion over medium-low heat until translucent, about 6 minutes. Add the garlic and a few pinches of salt and pepper. Add the trotter or pork bones and cook, stirring, another minute. Stir in the chili powder, oregano, cumin, and half the chopped cilantro. Add the tripe and enough water to cover. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer; cover and cook for 1 hour. Add the hominy and continue cooking 20-30 minutes. Taste for seasoning, adding extra salt or spices as desired. Serve in bowls with the reserved cilantro for garnish.
Blood Orange and Bacon Hangover Salad
The various and unusual mixture of textures and bright, punch-in-the-face flavors is bound to wake one up in the morning after a rough night out. This salad combines spicy radishes, tart blood oranges, savory bacon, and a crumble of roasted pistachios in a salad that’s as visually stunning as it is wake-worthy.
(SERVES ABOUT 3-4)
½ cup shelled pistachios
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 head Boston lettuce (or another leafy green lettuce, such as green leaf or red leaf)
1 large or 2 small blood oranges, peel removed and slices cut out without the pith (membrane that separates the slices)
3 strips bacon, cooked to crispy
2-3 small radishes, quartered to wedges
In a small bowl, combine the red wine vinegar, mustard, and a couple of pinches of salt and pepper. Drizzle in the olive oil while whisking rapidly until mixture is emulsified. Gently tear lettuce into bite-sized pieces. Toss in a large bowl with the dressing and remaining ingredients. Serve immediately.
CHAPTER 13
Cooking Up a Storm
COMPETITIVE COOKING AND COLLABORATIONS
I lay on my back in a shady patch of grass in Prospect Park alongside Karol, staring up at the sky. It was clear blue, with just a few wispy clouds like tautly pulled lambs wool. I could think of no better way to spend the warm June day than like this: surrounded by friends sitting on a pastiche of blankets in a clearing of trees, nibbling at homemade cookies and sipping on iced caipi
rinhas. It was a warm but breezy eighty degrees in the sun. There was a fountain bursting with a tall spray of water in the center of the large lawn where we’d staked our picnic, creating a constant tinkling noise behind the chatter. I could smell the sweet clover from a small patch in the grass beside me. Occasional shouts could be heard from friends who were playing Frisbee down the mead—did I just say “mead”? I think I did. Basically, it was pure heaven in Brooklyn.
As I closed my eyes, Karol yawning at my side, I conjured images of an outdoor picnic in the English countryside. Victorian straw hats, girls fluttering fans before their coyly pressed lips as male suitors stretched on the grass, peeling slices of apple away from their cores and presenting them to the damsels. I imagined spreads of fruit from the Dutch masters’ paintings, or Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass with its lone nude female seated front and center. Only we were fully clothed. Well, all but one. A tiny elderly woman had stepped into the park a short while ago, and promptly into the fountain. She began to strip to her underpants and a long button-down shirt, then continued to stand there in the sprinkling pool for a few minutes, absent-looking and utterly silent.
But aside from that interlude (she soon took off, ambling back through the bushes), it was a picture-perfect summer day. Not counting the woman with no pants, and a couple who came by with their dog at one point, there was no one on that particular stretch of lawn in Prospect Park but my friends and me.
The section of the park was called the Rose Garden, named so long ago, because there were no longer any rosebushes. Yet looking at old photos online, I saw that the Rose Garden had been lined with rose trellises in the 1800s, when the park was built, and had looked to be a very elegant knoll. The space was vaguely separated into three conjoined lawns, the middle one with the fountain in its center; the lower one, where Frisbee was being played, rested alongside a thick brush of forest; and the one opposite had just the faintest fringe of tall trees surrounding it, so that our picnic food could be set in the half shade. Matt and I had come across the location on my second foraging walk of Prospect Park with Steve Brill, earlier that spring. I found the setting oddly private, for Brooklyn at least. It was just obscure enough—to get there, one had to follow a small, shady trail—that not too many people seemed to know of it. Back in the spring on the foraging tour, the fountains had been sucked dry to circular ditches of concrete, and one’s voice echoed when one was standing in the middle of it. I thought the Rose Garden would be a perfect place to hold an early summer picnic, so I invited a horde of friends by e-mail and wisely chose a warm Saturday, and my dream was realized.
I asked each picnic guest to bring a potluck dish and decided that chicken salad would be the theme. Why chicken salad? Erin and I were sipping wine one night, and for some reason she began to talk about how wonderful it would be to eat cold chicken in a park. Inspired, I encouraged people to bring their own unique takes on chicken salad in my invitation, and I’d provide the bread. I also asked that no one bring disposable plates or cutlery, just a serving spoon for their salad. One of the reasons I thought sandwiches were the ideal picnic food was because they could be eaten by hand, so no wasteful paper plates or forks would be needed.
Adam brought a tremendous chicken salad with portobellos and roasted red peppers. Scott brought one with smoked paprika and radishes. Pauline brought one with walnuts and grapes. David and Shana brought a seitan vegetarian “chicken” salad with fresh dill. I brought one with nectarines and basil, and another one laced with Scotch bonnets and Caribbean jerk seasonings, plus some loaves of no-knead bread. Karol made deviled eggs, someone else made brownies, and Jordan and Ben brought peaches and nectarines. The Greenmarket at Grand Army Plaza, at the tip of the park, was open that day, and some people came toting fresh fruit and vegetables directly from there. Zoya brought a bag of fresh sugar snap peas, and we invented a delightful appetizer by removing the peas and filling the empty, crisp green pods with chicken salad. Konrad arrived victoriously toting a heavy cooler filled with fresh limeade, a bag of ice, and a bottle of Cachaça rum for making the Brazilian cocktail caipirinhas. Aaron brought a Frisbee. Nick brought juggling pins and was teaching others to use them; someone had brought a harmonica and was buzzing away on it. Trevor brought a picnic suitcase, filled with essentials like plates, flatware, and napkins.
This day should never end, I thought to myself as I closed my eyes and soaked in the sun through my thin cotton dress. True, I felt like a full tank by then because I had eaten so much. But who cared? Not I.
Have I mentioned that summer is the best time of the year for not eating out? And it wasn’t just because of “parknics.” Cooking and eating together with friends and family may have relatively peaceful moments, like these. But more often than not, they’re filled with frenzy. Looking back on all the barbecues, Thanksgivings, Friendsgivings, supper-club dinners, and other communal cooking events brings back memories of how intense the heat of the moment can get. How a kitchen acts as a stadium for a team sport, fighting against time and utter cooking failure. How smoky and sweaty it gets with four burners and the oven on, how many cooking utensils and half-prepared ingredients are juggled at a time, how much bodily contact there is with your collaborators, who are frequently in your way while concentrating on their tasks. And of course, the reward: how satisfying it is to share a meal together when all is done. It’s the greatest sport in the world, if you ask me.
That summer, 2008, would turn out to be the hottest, sweatiest, and most collision-worthy season of communal cooking for me yet. First, there were tons of cook-offs to attend. Over the last year, Karol and I had become pretty regular participants in local amateur cook offs. Karol’s obsession preceded mine, and our friends David and Shana had been bitten by the cook-off bug, too. Any type of cook-off, and anywhere in the city: a pie bake-off on Governor’s Island, a chili cook-off in a bar we’d never heard of, you named it. Just what was an amateur cook-off in New York City like? In a nutshell, they were infrequent special events where anyone could enter their homemade dish to win cash, bar prizes, and bragging rights. They were usually held in bars, organized by someone who worked there, or an outside host who’d gotten the bar’s permission. The rules were simple: Cook up a batch of X, in the biggest pot you owned, haul it to the cook-off venue by whatever means possible, talk about how you made it as you serve it up, while other contestants serve up their versions, sample everyone else’s food until you are stuffed silly, and await judgment time, when it was announced whose X was the best. Prizes might be given out, or for smaller cook-offs the winner might receive just a bar tab. The winner was often determined by audience vote: Anyone in attendance could write the name of their favorite on a slip of paper and submit it. But many cook-offs had a panel of judges, pulled together by various affiliations with the host and having some pedigree in the professional food world.
One of the main reasons cook-offs appealed to me was that they offered a unique mode of interaction over food—competition—and only the home-cooked kind. Because the food wasn’t made by professionals for a profit, I didn’t count filling up on an assortment of homemade chili as “eating out,” even if the event was held inside a bar or restaurant. I appreciated the social atmosphere of these events, hungry as I was for that now that I was living alone. Plus, everyone I met at cook-offs definitely had one thing in common: a love of home cooking. Karol and I began entering cook-offs, determined each time to invent the most mind-blowingly delicious, creative version of X at first. I’d like to think that each time we did, too. We didn’t make the food just to impress others, but to contemplate, experiment, and come up with our best effort, for ourselves—usually spending weeks mulling over our recipes, and at least a whole day preparing them. Karol made a sweet potato chili with all kinds of fresh peppers and chipotle, and once achieved her dream of pulling off a checkerboard pattern out of pumpkin and cheese-cake pie filling on a winning pie of hers. I made a salsa that riffed on the Bloody Mary once, with horseradish, celery, and olive
s, just for the heck of it, and succeeded in concocting a creamy, fresh watermelon juice pie that was more or less watermelon panna cotta with a graham cracker crust, and chocolate chips as the “seeds.” It didn’t matter whether we won or not after a while. We’d become friendly with a bunch of like-minded home cooks who’d enter the events often, too. I enjoyed getting to know their cooking styles, and it was always fun seeing what someone did to outdo themselves since the last cook-off—and maybe to outdo the person who’d won that one the last time. I found it fascinating to see how other nonprofessional chef-foodies like me liked to cook. How did they achieve this or that effect? How long did it take them? Some people like to spy or “people watch”; I like to watch how other average people cook.
I had gone to a couple of cook-offs that year hosted by an actor and sometime stand-up comedian named Matt Timms. The “Takedown” series, as it was called, began with just Chili Takedowns, and several rounds later, the classic cook-off spawned other competitions based on fondue, cookies, or key ingredients, such as bacon. Though we’d go to all of them, it seemed like there just weren’t enough Takedowns and other local cook-offs for us. One night as Karol and I were having drinks, we found ourselves discussing what type of food we would choose if we were hosting our own cook-off. Then we nabbed it: risotto. The creamy-textured rice dish, we decided, was easily adaptable to so many flavors and ingredients that it would make a perfect cook-off food. We looked at each other and each raised an eyebrow: Why not just organize it ourselves?