Erica De Mane

Recipes:
Roman-Style Tripe with Mint, Potatoes, and Cacio di Roma Cheese
Oxtail Stew with Red Vermouth and Orange
Short Ribs with Chianti and Celery Gremolata

In February and March, when the Union Square Greenmarket in Manhattan offers shoofly pie, beeswax candles, balls of wool, and potatoes, I take my inspiration not from seasonal produce but from New York trattoria cooking. I love slow-braised meat dishes, and I’m drawn to restaurants that offer renditions made from unusual cuts like oxtail, tripe, lamb shank, or short ribs. My grandmother used to occasionally cook tripe and oxtail, to the horror of everyone in the family except my grandfather. I was a young girl when she brought these dishes to the table, and I don’t remember actually eating them (probably I didn’t). We shared a winter house in Florida with my grandparents, and about the only thing I vividly remember having for dinner there was coconut patties, which my sister and I were wild for. Why my grandmother insisted on cooking oxtails and tripe in the Florida heat I can’t say, except that my grandfather was a tyrant who probably insisted on them. She also made pig’s knuckles, which my grandfather had discovered and fallen in love with at his weekly lunches at Luchow’s, the grand old German restaurant on 14th Street in Manhattan. Tripe and oxtail went out of my life completely when I was about ten, until a decade or so later when I began visiting Rome.

Rome’s Testaccio neighborhood once housed that city’s stockyards, and even though that business is now gone, there are still many restaurants around the area, some surprisingly fancy, that specialize in hearty dishes made from butcher’s cuts such as oxtail and pajata (stuffed cow’s intestines), always long-simmered in wine or tomatoes and herbs. In Rome these cuts, along with organ meats, are known as quinto quarto, or “fifth fourth,” because they make up a fifth part of an animal that is traditionally butchered in four main sections. I wouldn’t want to eat this food every day, but I find it sensational a few times a year. When I can’t get to the Testaccio, I go to Bar Pitti on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, a few blocks from my apartment. Bar Pitti’s tripe with potatoes and rosemary is elegant and unexpectedly light. In addition to this Roman-style tripe they also cook up a red-wine-hued oxtail stew and serve it with a mound of soft polenta.

I cook oxtail and tripe in my own little kitchen, always buying my tripe from Faicco’s on Bleecker Street, where I know it will be extremely fresh. Tripe is actually cattle’s stomach lining, which sounds a lot less desirable than it turns out to be when lovingly cooked. There are several cuts of tripe, but the most tender one is honeycomb (in Italy tripe stews are often made with three different cuts, some a little tough and gnarly). Any tripe you buy nowadays comes already partially cooked, which cuts preparation time by several hours, although to become meltingly tender even precooked tripe needs at least two hours of simmering to soak up all the wine and herb flavors and make a softened and nuanced dish.

Short ribs are not usually associated with Italian cooking, although they sometimes find their way into Italian-American Sunday meat sauces, along with sausages, bracciole, and pork chops. They make a smart addition there, for their rich taste and gelatinous texture produces a thick-bodied sauce that clings well to pasta (I use the sauce to dress the pasta and offer the meat as a second course, usually with a vegetable or salad, in true Southern Italian style). Short ribs are the meaty end sections of ribs. If you really love the taste of beef, they’re a great cut for you, tough and fatty to start with but cooking up soft and rich. They’re too tough to just throw on the barbecue like other ribs; they need a slow braise. The long, gentle cooking dissolves much of the fat, and you skim it off the top of the braising liquid.

Despite the lengthy cooking time these meats require, once up and simmering they don’t need to be coddled; they’re pretty much on their own, except for occasional skimming. Once they’re tender, all you need do to fine-tune the dish is a final check of the seasoning, balancing the flavors with salt, a squirt of lemon juice or vinegar, a drizzle of fresh olive oil, and maybe a handful of freshly chopped herbs. You can always reduce the sauce over high heat (after removing the tender meat) to concentrate the flavors, if you like.

Here are my interpretations of classic Roman tripe and oxtail stews, plus my improvisational short-rib ragu. I hope these warming recipes will help get you through the rest of the winter.

Happy cold-weather cooking to you.

Roman-Style Tripe with Mint, Potatoes, and Cacio di Roma Cheese

I learned to cook tripe at my first restaurant job, at Florent in the meatpacking neighborhood of Manhattan. When Florent first opened, we served many butcher-type dishes, including kidneys, sweetbreads, tongue, brains, and even animelles (beef testicles). It was interesting learning how to prepare those things, but I can’t say I’ve had a longing to cook up a batch of testicles since. I have, however, developed a real fondness for tripe, and I make it a couple of times every winter. Here is my interpretation of the classic Roman way to prepare it.

(Serves 5)

2 1/2 pounds honeycomb beef tripe
1/4 cup white-wine vinegar
Salt
Extra-virgin olive oil
A few tablespoons of unsalted butter
A few thin slices of fatty prosciutto end, chopped
4 shallots, cut into small dice
2 carrots, cut into small dice
1 celery rib, cut into small dice
Freshly ground black pepper
2 whole allspice, ground to a powder
1 bay leaf, fresh if possible
1 1/2 cups light white wine such as Frascati
1 35-ounce can plum tomatoes, well drained and chopped
About 1 1/2 to 2 cups homemade veal, mixed-meat, or chicken broth, or low-salt, canned chicken broth (Swanson is best)
A few small sprigs of mint, the leaves lightly chopped
A generous handful of basil leaves, chopped
6 medium Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and halved
A chunk of Cacio di Roma or other mild Pecorino cheese

Place the tripe in a large casserole fitted with a lid. Add the vinegar and pour on cold water to cover. Season with salt and bring the liquid to a boil over high heat. Turn off the heat and let the tripe sit in the casserole for 15 minutes. Drain the tripe and rinse it under cold water. This step refreshes the tripe and wakes up its flavor, and if any scum on the meat floats to the surface, it will rinse away. Dry the tripe and slice it into thin strips.

In the same casserole, add about 2 tablespoons each of butter and olive oil over medium heat. Add the prosciutto and let it sauté for about a minute, just to give off some of its fat. Add the tripe, shallots, carrot, celery, bay leaf, and ground allspice. Season with salt and black pepper and sauté until the vegetables have softened, about 5 minutes. Add the wine and let it boil down by half. Add the tomatoes, about 1 1/2 cups of broth, and about half the chopped herbs. Bring to a boil again and then turn the heat down to very low, cover the casserole, and cook at a gentle simmer until the tripe is very tender, about 3 hours (you can instead, if you prefer, place the covered casserole in a 325 degree oven). If the liquid evaporates to uncover more than about 1/4 of the tripe, add a little more broth (or if you run out, warm water).

When the tripe is tender, taste for seasoning, adding more salt or black pepper if needed. Add the rest of the chopped herbs and a drizzle of fresh olive oil. Right before serving, boil the potatoes until just tender, drain, and dress with olive oil and salt. Serve the tripe in deep pasta bowls or soup bowls with a few potatoes alongside. Sprinkle with a generous amount of freshly grated Cacio di Roma cheese.

Ideas: Mint is the traditional herb used to flavor this dish in Rome, but Bar Pitti in Manhattan uses rosemary, whose woodsy oils also blend nicely with tripe. I love this variation. If you’d like to try it, omit the mint and basil and add two small sprigs of rosemary to the casserole when you add the bay leaf. You don’t need to add additional fresh rosemary at the end, as you would with the mint and basil. Rosemary always tastes better to me when it has had a chance to open up with the heat of cooking. Fresh rosemary sprinkled on a finished dish can taste a little harsh (and the needles can be spiky).

Oxtail Stew with Red Vermouth and Orange

Oxtails were originally actually cut from oxen, which are castrated bulls. Now they are cut from everyday beef cattle, but I suppose oxtail sounds more folklorico than cow tail, so the original name of the stew has endured.

I’ve flavored the stew with a generous amount of orange juice and with sweet red vermouth. That may sound like an odd combination, and it’s not how my grandmother made it (she used tomatoes and possibly white wine, but nobody seems to remember exactly), but the long cooking blends the sweet and acid notes of the vermouth and juice into a lively sauce that gently lifts the richness of the very rich meat.

(Serves 4)

Extra-virgin olive oil
4 pounds oxtails (try to get the wider, meatier middle cut, not the tiny tail ends)
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
A small chunk of fatty prosciutto end, in one piece
2 leeks
2 carrots
2 garlic cloves
2 whole cloves, ground to a powder
1 cup sweet red vermouth
1 1/2 cups dry red wine
1 cup fresh orange juice, plus 2 strips orange rind
1 1/2 cups homemade beef broth or mixed meat broth (or use Perfect Addition or another high-quality frozen beef broth)
A few sprigs of winter savory, the leaves chopped
A splash of balsamic vinegar
A handful of flat-leaf parsley sprigs, the leaves lightly chopped

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Choose a large casserole that will hold the meat more or less in one layer (a little overlap is okay). Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat. Season the oxtails with salt and black pepper and brown them well on all sides. Add the prosciutto chunk, the leeks, carrots, garlic, and ground clove, and turn the heat down to medium. Sauté a few minutes to soften the vegetables. Add the red wine and the red vermouth and cook at a lively bubble for about 5 minutes. Add the orange juice and rind, the broth, and the savory. The meat should be almost completely covered with liquid. If not, add more broth or water. Bring this to a boil. Cover the casserole and place it in the oven. Let the stew cook at a low simmer until very tender, about 2 1/2 to 3 hours (the meat should be falling off the bone).

Take the casserole from the oven and remove the meat with a slotted spoon. Skim most of the fat from the surface of the sauce. (Oxtail throws off a lot of fat. If you like, you can make the stew the day before serving, refrigerate it overnight, and them skim the cold fat from the surface before reheating.)

Add a splash of balsamic vinegar to the sauce and give it a taste. Reseason with salt or black pepper if needed. Also if needed to intensify the flavors, boil the sauce down over high heat for a few minutes. Return the oxtails to the sauce and reheat briefly. Add the parsley. Serve in deep pasta bowls, over polenta if you like, but I prefer a simple accompaniment of good Italian bread to soak up all the sauce.

Short Ribs with Chianti and Celery Gremolata

Short ribs can be butchered in two ways, either lengthwise along the bone, like traditional ribs, or crosswise through the bone, into shorter sections. Either cut is fine for this recipe. In New York markets I most often find the short cut, sometimes called the flanken cut. One thing you should now about that cut is that just when the meat gets really tender and juicy, some of the short bones sometimes pull away and float around in the cooking liquid. I just discard them and serve the ribs semi-boneless. This doesn’t happen with the long cut.

Gremolata, a seasoning usually associated with osso buco (veal shank), is a mix of finely chopped lemon zest, parsley, garlic, and sometimes a little sage. You either mix it into the sauce or scatter it over the top of the osso buco right before serving, for a burst of flavor. I’ve added celery leaves to the gremolata mix, picking up on a prominent flavor in the sauce. They add a refreshing and pleasantly bitter note to the very rich meat.

You’ll notice that I season the dish with a few anchovy fillets. This is common in Italian meat cooking, and also in Provençal cuisine (in Provence they often spoon anchovy butter over grilled steaks, which I love). Anchovies add a little kick to a braised meat dish like this one, and the long cooking dissolves the fish, leaving behind a gentle enrichment that is not detectably fishy at all.

(Serves 4)

Sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper
A small palmful of coriander seeds, ground to a powder
A generous pinch of sugar
About 1/2 cup Wondra flour
Extra-virgin olive oil
4 pounds beef short ribs
4 medium shallots, cut into small dice
3 inner celery ribs, cut into small dice, plus the leaves from about 5 stalks, reserved for the gremolata
2 carrots, peeled and cut into small dice
4 anchovy fillets, rinsed
2 garlic cloves, peeled and lightly smashed
2 bay leaves, fresh if possible
A few large thyme sprigs, the leaves chopped
A bottle of Chianti or another rich Italian red wine
4 cups beef or mixed-meat broth (a mix of high-quality frozen beef broth, Perfect Addition or D’Artagnan, with Swanson’s canned low-salt chicken broth works especially well if you don’t have homemade broth on hand)
1 15-ounce can plum tomatoes, well chopped with juice
3/4 pound penne

For the gremolata:

1 garlic clove, peeled
The zest from 1 large lemon, using no bitter white pith
A few sprigs of flat-leaf parsley leaves
The reserved celery leaves (from above)
A pinch of sea salt

Dry the short ribs and season them with the ground coriander, salt, black pepper, and sugar. Coat them well with the flour.

Choose a large casserole fitted with a lid. Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil over medium flame. When the oil is hot, add the short ribs and brown well on all sides (you may need to do this in batches if your casserole is too small). When the ribs are well browned, turn the heat down a bit and add the shallots, celery, carrot, garlic, and anchovy. Sauté until the vegetables start to soften, about 4 or 5 minutes. Add the bay leaves, thyme, and the bottle of wine. Let the wine bubble and reduce by about a quarter. Now add the broth and the tomatoes. Bring to a boil. Turn the heat to low, cover the casserole, and simmer at a very low bubble until the meat is very tender, about 2 to 2 1/2 hours. You’ll need to skim fat from the surface several times during the cooking, and it’s a good idea to uncover the casserole in the last half hour, so the sauce can evaporate and thicken a little.

While the ribs are cooking make the gremolata by finely chopping all the ingredients and mixing them together in a small bowl (I like doing this by hand; an electric grinder or food processor can turn them into a mush where I prefer a dry, light consistency).

When you are ready to serve the dish, cook the penne al dente, drain, and place in a warmed serving bowl. Place the ribs on a serving platter and pour half the sauce over the penne and half over the ribs. Garnish the ribs with the gremolata. Grate a little Parmigiano or Grana Padano cheese over the pasta if you like. Both dishes can be served at the same time, or, more in keeping with Italian style, you can serve the pasta first, keeping the ribs warm, then make them a second course, along with a green salad or a vegetable such as sautéed escarole or broccoli rabe.