Allan Mitelman

Flaki Wolowe

5kg tripe, beef or pork soup bones
4 onions, chopped
celery and carrots, sliced
3 tablespoons flour
250g butter
salt and pepper
parsley

The preparation of flaki is time consuming and involves a disagreeable amount of hardto-grasp tripe.

The tripe should be scalded and cleaned.

Set to playing Wladyslaw Dombkowski's 1932 recording of 'In the Beanfield' and clean again with salt, knives and coarse brushes.

Recipes stress that one should be sure to cut away the discoloured edges.

Boil for 4-5 hours, then leave tripe to soak in water overnight.

Those practiced in flaki-making suggest that 'it should, when cooked, be so tender it can be crushed between the fingers.'

Add bones to a pot of water, along with the onion, carrot and celery and simmer for an hour or so.

Cut the cooked tripe in strips of a few centimetres in length, then add to the pot.

Cook for about 4 hours, or until the tripe has reached a soft perfection.

Brown the flour and butter in a frying pan, and then add a little soup stock to make a thin paste and mix it in to the pot.

After the final addition of the spices it should then be cooked for a few minutes more and served with parsley, marrow dumplings or rye bread, and vodka stolen from a neighbour that has been secreted away for just such an occasion, together with more Dombkowski.

serves 6