Title: Shkembe Chorba (Bulgarian Tripe Soup)
Categories: Bulgarian Offal Soup Beef
Yield: 4 Servings

		Tripe
		Hot dried red pepper
		Butter
		Milk
		Onions

My friend Eva made shkembe chorba last week. I think this wsa only the second time she made it and she was working from memories of helping or watching her mother make it back in Bulgaria. Here is how she described the process (and the closest I could get to a recipe).

1. Boild some tripe until its soft. She boiled ot four hours and she thinks it was still too tough. Her mother used a pressure cooker which shortened the cooking time. Discard the cooking water.

2. Heat some hot dried red pepper in butter. Be careful not to burn it.

3. Bring some milk to a boil.

4. Add the butter/pepper and the tripe and bring back to a boil.

Does this sound about right? I was startled by its minimalism. When I told her I read on the internet that it was usually eated in shkembe chorba restaurants where the recipe was a closely help secret she said "Yes. The restaurants add some of the boiling water to the milk in order to save money." (Or words to that effect.) It was ok. To my (non-Bulgarian) mind it could have used something else - onions, maybe?

Barry Grau (grau@uic.edu)

Nope. Garlic. And vinegar. Real men have it with jalapenos and beer on the side.

Kamen

There are lots of kinds of Skembe Chorba. Variation to make the intestines cook quicker is that when you clean them yourself, you are usually cutting them open until they are flat, scraping the inside after the cleaning with a knife. After the final scraping, you cut in small piece, boil for 5 minutes, rinse in cold water and then add them to new water with a couple sliced onions, stalks of celery and salt (you remove these so they only add the flavor and no one sees them). You remove the vegies except the onion unless you have put onions in whole. you boil down to reduce liquid to less, then add milk and heat without letting it boil. Take off heat. Beat up two egg yolks with juice of one lemon. Add to soup. At last minute add some butter and parsley.

Note - all of these recipes are inappropriate for the Great Fast which we are in right now. No meat, no fish, no dairy products. Not even oil on wednesdays and fridays, but on sunday fish, olive oil and wine are allowed

From: spasi@erols.com

From: Grau@uic.Edu (Barry Grau)

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