OX BELLY STEW

Spent five days over Easter in Hungary and a couple of days cycling through the countryside. Just collected the photos, sadly blurred because I only realised the camera shutter speed was wrong, unfortunately at the end of the roll of film. Anyway, I remembered a silly incident that I'd kind of forgotten about. At a restaurant somewhere away from the city on the banks of the Danube (Neil? Where?!) stopped for lunch. I ordered the above from the menu, envisaging the flesh of the animal - I'm so ignorant, though. I AM NOT A BUTCHER! I thought 'belly' meant a soft, tender cut of meat, something like tenderloin (which I know now is nowhere near the stomach). When the meal came, it looked very strange. It took a few minutes to figure out that it was tripe. Honeycomb tripe, at that. The "meat" (if you can call it that) was cut into strips, and it had odd, hexagonal-type 'gills' on it. God knows what function they serve. Probably to 'waft' the half digested food through the innards of the ox, towards the large intestine, or worse.

It was offputting, but hey! mussels don't look great if you look at them too closely but they're delicious, so I wasn't about to let the look of it put me off. I didn't want to be the kind of person who orders an ommelette at an Indian restaurant, so I was gamely trying to trick myself into liking it. Also, tripe is, or at least, has been, a staple of people in that region for centuries. A continent of people can't be wrong. And out in rural Hungary, at least it would be cooked properly. It had lots of tomatoes and the right seasoning, so I was confident it had been cooked right.

It was irredeemably foul in every way: in taste, texture (especially that) and appearance. Not to worry, at least I know what it's like now.