Sweet Honeycomb Tripe

What sort of dish would you prepare with this?



Or, perhaps, this?



I still don't have answers to those questions, because I didn't cook this.


But I ate this, and it was good.



I spent the last week in January back in North Carolina where I downed cups of coffee and wrote furiously against a deadline by day, and downed margaritas and ate heaps of home cooked mexican food by night. This food was cooked in the home of my sister by her roommate, Luis, who chops a fine pico de gallo, pours good tequila, and, when he can find someone willing to eat it, cooks up a mean pot of cow belly.

Luis' take on Menudo--Mexican beef tripe stew--is heavy on the garlic and black pepper. After being cooked down for hours and hours, the tripe relinquishes its rubberiness and unfolds into tender, meaty tasting morsels that soak up the spicy broth. From what I can gather, hominy is often a principle ingredient in menudo, but not Luis' menudo. Perhaps he didn't want any starchy filler taking the place of all that offal goodness.

He bought his tripe from a Mexican meat market in Durham, where it was piled high among the beef cheeks, pig's feet, chicken claws, and several unidentifiable parts. Cows have four stomachs. Luis chose slabs from stomach number 1 (smooth tripe) and stomach number 2 (honeycomb tripe), along with a few beef feet. He looked very happy. My sister looked a little green. And I couldn't stop staring at the cows' tongues, sprawled out in a row, each one as long as my forearm. Cow tongue, I was relieved to learn, is not a traditional menudo ingredient.

Back in Pittsburgh, perusing the meat section of the neighborhood Giant Eagle Grocery, I lingered a bit over the beef tripe and pig's feet. Apparently Pittsburghers eat offal too. I sort of have a hard time picturing a Pittsburgher cheering on the Steelers over a hot bowl of tripe stew, but perhaps I have lots more to learn about my local cuisine.