Over a recent email exchange of recipe swapping, a good friend offered me her tripe recipe in return for my curry recipe. Being the greedy soul that I am, I asked if she could come over and show me how to cook the tripe in person and she agreed.

Now I must confess that I have a great love for offal. I am, however, an armchair offal eater. I order it in restaurants or I eat it at other people’s houses. I’m not sure how to handle or prepare the parts and tend to feel a little intimidated at the idea of cooking, say, a lamb’s heart. So I was thrilled to get a first hand account on tripe.

The white, spongy honeycomb pattered flesh purchased at Essex Market was almost too beautiful to cook. It was shaped rather like a bishop’s hat and weighed just over 2lbs.

Susan started a simple tomato sauce first: celery, carrots, onion, garlic and two large cans of tomatoes, left to simmer to a rich thick sauce.

The tripe was simply boiled whole in the largest pot we could find and once the flesh started to give a little and yet remain crunchy, she removed it from the boiling pot, chopped the flesh up and incorporated it into the sauce where it continued to cook for about 20-30 minutes. The dish was served with chopped mint (a nice touch), grated pecorino and a little parmigiano.

Susan, our guest chef, grew up in Rome and she offered this in a recent note she sent me, “My mother used to make Trippa alla Romana when I was a kid, and I’m one of the very few “Romans” of my generation who still likes the stuff. The way you and I made it on Saturday is the standard Roman way of cooking tripe, the acidity in the tomatoes helps tenderize the tripe. Grated pecorino romano and chopped roman mint (along the lines of regular mint here, but thicker, stronger-flavored and mintier) make it especially Roman.”

After some research online, and in our out-of-print cookbooks, I also came across Trippa alla Trasteverina – tripe made in the area of Trastevere, the old Jewish quarters of Rome. Variety Meats in our Good Cook series of books offers up Trippa alla Toscana, very similar to the recipe of Rome. According to a website I came across, this tripe recipe (of essentially boiling tripe and adding to a tomato sauce) is a national dish all the way from Rome to Florence. And now NYC.