Increasingly in the culinary culture around the world there has been a move towards a more all inclusive attitude towards consuming animals. In saying this, I don't mean that more people are doing it, quite the contrary...sometimes it feels like vegetarians are starting to take over (Riv I’m looking at you)!! No, no, in this case I mean using more and more of the animal as a means to create a dish. Historically all parts of the animal were used to make meals, flesh, organs, feet, the lot, but over time we became a world that championed the pure meat and began to marginalise or even completely ignore the less attractive and appealing parts of the animal. This is a trend that, while still present all over the world does not seem to have taken over in quite the same way in parts of Asia, South America and even Europe as I have recently learned. The 'nose-to-tail' craze is not simply a hipster fad in these places but simply the way they have made and continue to make delicious and nutritious traditional food.
On our recent trip to South America I learned that offal and tripe are central parts of most people's meat based diets. Particularly in countries like Perú and Colombia. This is for a number of reasons. Primarily it is just a question of logic, it is there, it is edible, so why wouldn't you eat it?! The second reason is a financial one, with the aforementioned increasing trend towards a desire for only the prime cuts of meat, the price of those has increased massively and accordingly the price of the leftovers has plummeted. Finally, it is fundamentally about the taste and the parts of the animals that have been used in traditional recipes for decades and even centuries. Take Sopa de Mondongo (stomach soup) from Colombia as an example. This is a very traditional Colombian dish and is created simply using tripe from a pig or a cow, dicing it up, mixing it with some vegetables and water and boiling it up. It sounds simple, and that's kind of the point. It easy, it's cheap and it's delicious! In Eastern Europe in countries like Bulgaria and Romania they have a fairly similar tripe soup made using the stomach, off-cuts of the meats and a delicious combination of herbs and spices. However, in this part of the world, offal and tripe are also used as the exclusive meat component of many dishes and could not be substituted for the fancier and more glamorous alternatives as they would just not be the same dish. While in Bulgaria I ate the most wonderful chicken offal stew which contained heart, liver, kidneys, intestines...the lot, and it was absolutely sensational. It's not just in poorer cultures that you can find offal and tripe being thrust into the limelight of widely eaten dishes. It would be no surprise to see a dish containing heart or liver on most of the tapas menus in Spain, or coming off a giant skewer at a Brazilian BBQ restaurant. I even tried the most incredible tripe sausage on a recent trip to Torremaggiore in southern Italy and one of my favourite sandwiches ever was the lampredotto (tripe and gravy) sandwich I had in Florence. Yes, it's true, most of the dishes that contain tripe and offal were traditionally primary features of peasant diets but just because they were peasants did not mean they didn't know flavour!! I know tripe and offal isn't for everyone, sometimes it's a taste thing, sometimes a texture thing and sometimes it's purely and simply psychological. As I am sure you know well, I will try anything once and I have yet to regret an occasion when I took a punt on a local tripe or offal dish anywhere in the world...but that's not to say that it won't happen, I'm realistic about these things. Having said that, here's to many more innard-based delights in the future!
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Follow us on Instagram or send us a messageAbout Foodie FridaysWe love food, as most people do! And when we are on the road this doesn't change. We, like many people, believe that food is one of the best ways to really get to know a culture and it's people, as so much about the way people live their lives around the world is centred around food. This means that when we travel we actively seek out the local foods and delicacies. Sometimes that comes in the form of unusual and exotic produce from markets and sometimes from street food vendors serving an array of barbecued, fried, steamed or entirely indistinguishable goodies. Having tried and tested these goodies for some time now, on our adventures around Asia, Europe, North and South America we have discovered some pretty wonderful treats that we have decided should earn a bit of publicity. So, as the working week drifts away and the weekend winks at you like a naughty temptress we will share with you one of the delights that we have encountered from around the world! We hope you enjoy reading about these as much as we enjoyed eating them! Archives
October 2017
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