Trippa alla Parmagiana in Photos

I'm not sure what's gotten into me of late, but I've cooked more offal in the last two weeks than I've ever eaten in my life.  Maybe it's a quarter life crisis I'm going through.  Or maybe it's the weekly six-plus inch snowfalls that NYC has been experiencing of late.  Or maybe it's the impending financial armageddon that all those loud mouths on CNN and Fox News keep speaking of that's persuaded me to master cooking the less desired cuts of meat.  Whatever's causing my recent fascination with offal, I'm enjoying the challenge.

My latest offal experiment was Trippa alla Parmigiana, a tomato-based stew full of the rubbery stomach lining of a cow that we all know as tripe.  It's a classic Italian dish, and I used Andrew Carmellini's recipe from Urban Italian.  Below is a photo log of the technique for making this simple stew that is so full of flavor that  those who are horrified by the thought of tripe might not even hate it all that much.

I have to admit, tripe is not one of the better-looking cuts, even as offal goes:

The rest of my mise en place:

First, I boiled the tripe in salted water for about 15 minutes:

Then I cut up the tripe into medium-size strips:

Next, I moved onto making the stew.  First up was the onions, which I sauteed in olive oil:

Then I coated the tripe pieces and the onions with a mixture of melted butter and red pepper flakes:

I added a white wine, a can of San Marzano tomatoes, and a mixture of veal and chicken stock and brought everything to a boil.

I then covered the stew and popped it into a 300F oven for 3 hours.  Once out, uncovered it, added a bunch of sliced carrots and celery, and allowed it to simmer on the stove for another hour until it was nice and thick:

I seasoned the stew and voila:

Oh wait, it needs one more thing to make it perfect:

Italian Seafood Stew

 Stew in mid-August? No thank you.  Seafood stew? Well, now that you mention it...

Italian seafood stew, tomato-based and chock full of just about any seafood you want, is one of my favorite dishes that I have made this summer.  I used a recipe from Marco Canora's Salt to Taste, spiking the tomatoes with plenty of lemon and tossing in calamari, little neck clams, mussels, shrimp. and cod.  However, hot summer days are not meant to be spent fretting over recipes, so toss in whatever spices and seafood you like.  Just keep main components the same-- a soffrito of celery, fennel, and onions, a can of crushed tomatoes, a splash of white wine, and some perfectly cooked seafood-- and you are guaranteed a great seafood stew that, when washed down with a crisp white wine, just might take you from a small studio apartment to a beach on the Amalfi Coast.  Unfortunately for this New Yorker, I was quickly awakened from my dream by a truck barreling down Second Avenue, but I plan to revisit it by making this stew at least one more time this summer.   

Bo Kho Vietnamese Beef Stew

Bo kho, a traditional Vietnamese beef stew made with tomato, star anise, and lemongrass, from Andrea Nguyen's Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: