Tripe

Pinkly grilled calf’s liver and sautéed chicken livers, roasted veal kidneys and devilled lamb’s kidneys, brains in brown butter sauce, sweetbreads sliced and fried to a golden brown, black pudding, pig’s ears and feet, oxtail: I like to cook offal of all kinds, but I think tripe may be my favourite. I came to like it as a child when my father would occasionally cook it for supper.

As well as being a great favourite in the north of England, tripe is part of the robust rural cooking of many countries, including Portugal, Mexico, Spain, Italy, Brazil, China, Turkey and France. In Taiwan it is cooked with black beans and ginger. In Istanbul tripe soup is a great restorative after a night out.