I consider myself a pretty adventurous eater by western standards. I've gone to Chinese restaurants and ordered pig intestine, I was all too happy to try a durian milkshake in Singapore, and one of my favorite things to order at Dim Sum is tripe.
I may or may not have mentioned it before, but Arkansas is a bit of a culinary wasteland. There's plenty of barbecue places and more than a few steak houses, but if you want to step out of a western comfort zone - culinarally wise - you're pretty much S.O.L. There's one good sushi place within a decent driving distance but that's about it.
So I've been craving good asian food - especially dim sum - lately, and the other day I was wandering through the Wal-Mart grocery section and I noticed that they actually sell tripe there. What's more it doesn't look like "larry's discount tripe" - it's actually clean and relatively appetizing. I pondered this for a day or two while I searched for recipes* and then returned to purchase it with the intent of making an at least passable attempt at recreating some of the flavors I had missed.
Thus did I return home and put the trip in a pot of water to simmer for 2 hours, as most of the recipes suggested. I quickly determined that this might have been a mistake, though, as my kitchen almost immediately began smelling like a feed lot. Still, I persevered, convinced that the end result would be worth the minor inconvenience of a bad odor.
Two hours later, I removed the offending offal, rinsed it and cut it up. I then placed some to steam with ginger, green onion, and sesame oil in the same fashion as the dim sum style. The rest went into a frying pan with another sauce. The smell didn't really improve. Undeterred, I plated my creations and tasted them.
As I said, the odor was like a feed lot. If you could translate the odor into a taste, you'd get the flavor in my mouth. I managed to try one bite of each, and then promptly tossed everything in the trash. It was by far the worst thing that I'd ever tasted.
Tonight I'm going to try something a little less daring - pork chops, or maybe lamb if I can find it.
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*I was very surprised how few recipes I was able to find when searching for dim sum tripe recipes. Maybe my google-fu is just weak.
