eG Foodblog: Abra and Chufi in SW France - Tantalizing Tales of Tripe

[Chufi]

Lunch: delicious paté from the local butcher, roasted beets, some cheese that we don't know the name of, cornichons and olives

Abra's lunch was a bit more frugal with lots of broccoli...

Here's the yoghurt selection we bought: caramel et sel, violette, maple pecan, rhubarb and sheep's yoghurt with vanilla:

I promise you Beppo won't be in every food picture. But then again, he might be. He's just too cute!

we tried the caramel et sel and the violette. The caramel was very good but a bit too sweet, and the violet yoghurt was, according to Abra, subtle and a bit weird but still something she would eat again:

Abra's been cutting up a chicken and rubbing some pigs feet. I'll see if she's ready to share her experiences with you all.

[Abra]

Let's get one thing clear at the outset: we love animals. We're the most tender-hearted pair you could imagine.

See what I mean? But still, if you're going to make a dish of cow stomach and pig feet, not to mention entire chicken body, you have to, er, get really familiar with the animals in question.

The pigs feet are rather disconcertingly like our hands. And if you've seen the Basque ham that lives with us, you'll be happy to see that he now has company.

The tripe is easy, surprisingly so in fact. It's utterly gorgeous. We're making the recipe for tripe and pig's feet stew from The Cooking of SouthWest France, just in case you want to follow along. Before we got to the step about boiling the tripe, we received this email from bleudauvergne, who's lived in France for a long time:

"I looked at the recipe - it looks great. However one thing about the tripes & pigs feet here in France, because of the way that the butchers pre-treat their product here, step 2 would be a waste of time and would overprocess the tripes. That is, if the tripes are beigy white to white in color, it's been already pre-soaked and boiled - an it is ready for slicing and starting with step 3. The pigs feet should be already scrubbed clean and maybe parboiled by the butcher. They just need a good rinse before their day in the herb and salt. If you already have the pigs feet, no bother, but normally for a recipe like this I would have them cut in half by the butcher, lengthwise, which makes them easier to bone when the ragout is done."

Now, as you know, it was too late to have the pigs feet split. But look at this tripe.

It's clearly been pre-treated by the butcher and is ready to go. In fact, it looks and smells so good already that it's almost a shame to cook it. Almost. Even Beppo agrees that it's ready to eat.

The chicken was much more challenging. She lost her life on Friday, and has been aging gracefully in the fridge ever since. Maybe a little too gracefully for comfort.

She's a real beauty, and destined for Poule au Pot, another delicious-looking recipe from CSWF. She even has "innard beauty."

Chufi's in the kitchen simmering quince, her fruit specialty, in preparation for tomorrow's tart of quince and pruneaux d'Agen. Or maybe she's just in the kitchen sniffing the stock for the poule au pot, which smells better than Thanksgiving as it bubbles quietly on the stove. In fact, it's made from the turkey carcass and a pile of duck bones, and probably has a lot in common with Thanksgiving.

Amazingly enough, we still have to eat tonight, and since the tripe and pigs feet will be cooking from about 7:00 tonight (or 19:00 as we'd say here) we'll probably be having leftovers for dinner. However, Chufi promises to make us bread and butter pudding, for which we've been stockpiling bread for a couple of days, so I don't think you need to feel sorry for us.

[MelissaH]

Reading about this is the next-best thing to being there. What a treat!

MelissaH

[malarkey]

oh yay!! This is great you guys!! So looking forward to all your posts & pictures!

[johnnyd]

La Tempête Parfaite du foodblog est arrivé!!

...not to, you know, put any more pressure on you guys or anything.

Edited December 10, 2007 by johnnyd (log)

[Daniel]

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Such a beautiful cat

So excited to read this.. We are going to be over there in a couple of months.. Looking forward to reading this.. How great you planned this and got together..

[therese]

And here I thought I'd be doing something other than reading a food blog this week. Hah!

Blog on, ladies.

[Abra]

I forgot to add the photo credits. Except for pictures of the two of us, which were taken by my husband, all the pictures so far have been Chufi's. She and I have almost exactly the same camera, and we'll take the exact same shots, and her pictures will look lots better than mine do. So, maybe she'll teach me a thing or two about photography, and I'll teach her the glories of gelatinous food.

So, off to open a nice bottle of wine, set the tripe in the oven as soon as the bread pudding comes out, and rummage in the fridge for leftovers for supper. A toute à l'heure and tot later!

[Vinotas]

Wow, how awesome is this!!!! I am getting (second) homesick!

Can't wait to virtually taste all these delicious dishes!

Felicitations!

[Abra]

So excited to read this.. We are going to be over there in a couple of months.. Looking forward to reading this.. How great you planned this and got together..

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Daniel, how nice to see you!

so, I just took the bread and butter pudding out of the oven. It doesn't look right to me so I'm a bit worried. The first night I was here, I was in charge of cooking the red cabbage and I burned it, so maybe I'm on a bad cooking streak, please all of you keep your fingers crossed that Abra's chocolate-loving husband will like my chocolate bread and butter pudding....

[Chufi]

okay, so, that previous post was not actually written by Abra, but by me

but I guess you all got that right?

[bleudauvergne]

Dear Abra & Chufi, I am waiting impatiently for tomorrow to arrive. I have my train ticket and have gathered a few things to bring down to you. Luckily Les Halles is just near the station for a last minute errand before my train leaves. It will be a pleasure to cook with you!

[Megan Blocker]

Mon dieu! Best foodblog pairing ever!

[Chufi]

So, bread and butter pudding. Not having actually made this ever before, but trying to earn some points by making a deliciously chocolatey rich and creamy dessert out of leftovers, I looked up some recipes for chocolate bread pudding online and then devised my own.

I won't tell you what I did because frankly, it wasn't that much of a success...

unbaked

on the plate

let's no longer talk about it I'm in charge of dessert tomorrow... wish me luck.

This is what was happening this afternoon: stock for the Poule au Pot simmering and smelling absolutely heavenly, and some quinces cooking down to a coarse puree, to be used in the dessert tomorrow:

Abra says I should not be so negative about the pudding, but hey, this is my post so I can. Oh and it's not all a bed of roses on the blogfront, in case that's what you were thinking. Abra keeps straightening my artistically crooked pictures! What's up with that??

Actually we did get to eat dinner before dessert. And pretty good it was too, even if it looked like an assembly from a weird cruise ship buffet:

Romanesco with garlic vinaigrette, leftover duck in red wine with onions and prunes, leftover enchiladas, and a Marcelline from the local market (puff pastry filled with ham and St. Marcellin cheese)

The duck was leftover from dinner on Saturday. This is another recipe from Cooking of South West France. It was good Saturday, but it was better today!

Here's what it looked like 2 days ago:

While we were heating up the leftovers we were also prepping for dinner tomorrow. The tripe and pigs feet dish isn't really that much work, it just takes a really long time to cook. First you put a base of vegetables in the pot:

Then you put the tripe and pigs feet on top, and pour over a mixture of wine, saffron and tomatopaste. That sounds easy enough, except there wasn't a bottle of wine in the house suitable for this purpose, so we had to run out to the grocerystore before we could proceed!

We then wrapped the whole thing tightly with foil and put it in a low oven where we will now forget about it for the next twelve (12) hours.

If that's not Slow Food, I don't know what is.

I know we've been talking about wine a lot. We've been drinking, too.

Edited December 10, 2007 by Chufi (log)

[Eden]

I'm sitting here with a winter cold, and this blog is just warming me right up inside.

I'm with chufi, the tripe scares me a little, but I trust Abra... And who can complain about eating leftovers when they're of that calibre?

I must try violette yoghurt! You could never sell it here - most people are afraid of floral flavors in their foods

[SeaGal]

Wow! Abra, Chufi and bleudauvergne all in the same kitchen! Can't wait to read the rest.

[johnnyd]

Oh and it's not all a bed of roses on the blogfront, in case that's what you were thinking. Abra keeps straightening my artistically crooked pictures! What's up with that??

Easy fix: give her a quick knuckle-rap on the top of the noggin. Works on me whenever I screw around with fatdeko's bar set-up.

[markemorse]

I know you said not to talk about it, but...the chocolate bread pudding looks mighty fine to me....I just can't believe there's much wrong with anything that looks so right.

Edited December 10, 2007 by markemorse (log)

[Daniel]

Looks great.. Hey your in France what about a Croissant bread pudding?

[dockhl]

If only his little finger and thumb didn't look so.......human

I'm sure it'll taste great ! Blog on !

[Cadbury]

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Chufi and Abra hamming it up! (Sorry - couldn't resist )

[mizducky]

Oh dear! Beppo looks like he's just about ready to perpetrate one of those pet-caused cooking disasters we've been posting about elsewhere ... (What a cutie Beppo is!)

And the beauty of gizzards--or pupicks, as they're called in Yiddish--was invoked just today in the Daily Gullet. (This one here is a fine looking specimen, by the way.)

[KatieLoeb]

This is fabulous! Almost too good to be true. My very favorite cooks/bloggers all together at once. Awe inspiring. I can hardly wait for the rest.

This is gonna be goooood...

[Genny]

What a treat!! I'm so glad that I couldn't sleep and tuned into eG tonight. You two are so much fun it tickles

Beppo looks like a boy version of my Ali! They have the same "M" on the forehead. Does he take donations? Ali's favorite is chicken.

I'm looking forward to the rest of the week! Mmmm, trotters look fabulous so far!

[Abra]

7:00 a.m. found us skulking around the kitchen in our jammies, sniffing the air. We were thinking that the smell of the tripe and trotters would be really intense after the 12 hours of cooking, but only a subtle perfume pervaded the air. The great unwrapping ceremony was met with a certain measure of disappointment: not done was the verdict. As we struggled with the sticky, not yet gelatinous trotters, Chufi was heard to mutter "this is the weirdest thing I've ever done before breakfast!"

So back into the oven with the trotters and tripe, into the shower with the humans, and over to the bakery for a more normal start to our morning.

Back in a bit.