Lyon & Burgundy · Main
Tablier de Sapeur
- Advanced
- 55 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, richness that coats and comforts, lifted green at the very end.
Ingredients
- 600 g cooked honeycomb ox tripe, gras-double
- 150 ml dry white Mâcon
- 55 g Dijon mustard, 40 g for the marinade and 15 g for the sauce
- 2 lemons
- 6 g fine salt
- 2 g white pepper
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 80 g plain flour
- 180 g fine dried breadcrumbs
- 120 g clarified butter
- 3 hard boiled eggs
- 1 raw egg yolk
- 250 ml groundnut oil
- 20 ml white wine vinegar
- 40 g cornichons, chopped
- 20 g capers, rinsed
- 20 g tarragon, chervil and parsley, chopped
The skills inside
Draining fried food: a rack, never paperSalted water & the float testMarinating: acid, salt and timeMashing & puréeing
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg · peanuts · mustard · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Cut the tripe into 8 palm sized pieces and marinate overnight in the wine, the 40 g mustard, the juice of one lemon and the pepper, turning once.
- Drain and pat every piece bone dry on cloth, then pass it through flour, beaten egg and breadcrumbs, pressing the crumbs on firmly. Chill uncovered an hour so the coat sets and dries.
- Gribiche: mash the cooked yolks with the raw yolk and the 15 g mustard to a smooth paste, then drive in the oil drop by drop until it grips and in a thin stream once it thickens. Slacken with the vinegar, then fold in the chopped whites, cornichons, capers and herbs.
- Fry in the clarified butter at 170C (340F), a few pieces at a time, until the crust is deep gold and crackles under the back of a spoon, about 3 min a side. Drain on a rack, never stacked on paper. 3 min
- Salt at once and serve with the gribiche and the second lemon in wedges.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Marinating: acid, salt and time 70 recipes
- Contact is total: every surface is wetted, and the pieces are not welded into a clump with dry faces where they pressed together.
- The stated time was kept and kept cold, read against a clock, because this is the one technique where longer is a different result rather than a safer one.
- It worked at the surface and no further: cut a piece and the marinade’s colour stops a few millimetres in. A protein gone opaque and chalky to the centre before any heat reached it has been cooked by the acid.
- The texture is still springy and whole, not mushy, mealy, or fraying at the surface when it is lifted.
- Where the next step browns it, the surface was patted dry first: a wet surface cannot brown, and the marinade’s sugars will scorch before the food colours.
Where it goes wrong It was left well beyond the stated time on the assumption that more is better, so acid and salt worked through the thin edges: those cook to cotton and read grainy while the thick centre tastes of nothing at all.
Draining fried food: a rack, never paper 77 recipes
- The rack was in place before the first thing went into the oil, not fetched afterwards while food waited in a spider over the pot.
- It lands on a rack with air moving underneath it. Anything set down on paper or a flat plate traps its own steam against its base.
- Salted within seconds of landing, while it is still hot enough to take seasoning.
- A minute later the underside is still as crisp as the top: no soft flat patch where it has been sitting.
- Nothing is stacked or piled while hot, however tempting it is to keep it together. A pile steams itself soft from the inside out.
Where it goes wrong It was drained on paper, or piled up to keep warm. Steam leaving the food has nowhere to go but back into the crust, so the underside softens within a minute: the crispness the frying just bought is gone before the plate reaches the table.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Champagne: when lost, bubbles
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais, lightly chilled
- From the Taps
- Pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus
The universal donors: acid, bubbles, and low tannin rescue nearly any plate: the sommelier’s honest safety net.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.