Ciorbă de burtă

Ingredients

• Beef tripe — cleaned1.2 kg
• Beef bones500 g
• Carrots2
• Celeriac150 g
• Onion1
• Garlic12 clove
• Egg yolks4
• Cream300 ml
• Vinegar100 ml
• Black peppercorns10
• Hot pepper — to serve2
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Rinse the tripe several times in cold water, rub it with salt and rinse it again.

   20 min

2. 2

   Boil the tripe in water with half the vinegar for ten minutes and throw away that first water.

   15 min

3. 3

   Cover it with fresh water along with the bones and root vegetables and simmer four hours.

   245 min

4. 4

   Lift out the tripe, cut it into fine strips and return it to the strained broth.

   20 min

5. 5

   Crush the garlic with salt into a paste and let it down with a ladle of the broth.

   8 min

6. 6

   Whisk the yolks with the cream and ladle in hot broth, stirring without stopping.

   8 min

7. 7

   Pour the mixture into the pot off the heat, add the garlic and the remaining vinegar, and warm it through without boiling.

   8 min

About the dish

The tripe simmers four hours with vinegar and lemon. Less and it stays rubbery; the acid both tenderises it and removes its particular smell.

The soup is soured with borș, a fermented bran liquid like the Moldovan one. Lemon juice replaces it, but the flavour comes out blunter.

The yolks and cream go in off the heat and are tempered with hot broth. Poured straight into the pot they curdle and the soup goes to flakes.

Worth knowing

• — The first water must be thrown away. It carries the whole of the particular smell, and without that step the soup is unpleasant.
• — Plenty of garlic goes in, and raw. It is one of the main flavours here rather than a seasoning, and boiled it loses all its bite.
• — The soup comes with hot pepper and vinegar on the table. Each person sets their own sourness and heat, and that is part of Romanian service.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

480 kcal

Protein

38 g

Fat

30 g

Carbs

12 g

More from Romania

• Sarmale — Cabbage rolls in soured leaves with pork and rice, braised three hours under a layer of shredded cabbage.
• Mămăligă — A firm cornmeal porridge, cut with a thread rather than a knife.
• Papanași — Curd doughnuts shaped as a ring with a ball on top, with soured cream and jam.