Sometimes, to cook food well is to make sure the food is well cooked.
My partner Charlie died in 1994. Back in the 1980s, our romance was going full-bore; and the time eventually came when he had to take me to meet the family. They lived in a shotgun shack on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, off the road between Oglala, South Dakota and Chadron, Nebraska. Dried badlands that grew barely enough grass to graze cattle. They had a few horses and a dog, no electricity (it went out to the utility pole but the house had never been wired), and water from a hand pump outside the house. Charlie’s parents were old and didn’t speak much English, but they were very nice to me.
During the day, various sisters and brothers came by, along with their kids. It was eventually decided that in celebration of my arrival, they would make taniga. I had no idea what this was, so I didn’t know what to expect.
They pooled $20 in food stamps, and sent Charlie, myself, and Charlie’s friend Todd to a slaughterhouse in Gordon, Nebraska. After quite a long drive, we got there. I waited in the car while the other two went in to complete the transaction. About 15 minutes later, they came out with a black plastic garbage bag one-quarter full of — something. I didn’t know what, but its smell had barnyard qualities to it.
When we got back to the house, I had a look. It was tripe — cow stomach — that had only been rinsed a bit. It had not been processed with lime to turn it a dainty white; no, it was “green tripe”. It was greenish brown and smelled rank.
Charlie’s sisters did further cleaning and cutting of the tripe into smaller pieces. They then threw the pieces of tripe into a big enamelware stock pot, covered it with water, threw in some salt, and put it on an old Franklin stove outside the house, stoked with firewood.
The water started boiling mid-afternoon. We spent the day chatting, and watching the stove. I shared myself with the family, and they shared themselves with me. In the Lakota way, I became the new family member.
The sun set. The taniga was still boiling. The sisters ladled the scum off the broth, and added water from time to time. At almost midnight, the sky was inky black with pinprick stars, and the taniga had boiled enough. They gave me a serving in a styrofoam bowl and handed me a plastic spoon. I fought back some queasiness and fished out a small piece of the rubbery mass in my spoon. Mirable dictu! It was beefy and a little earthy, and delicious. I went back for seconds.
Since then, the USDA has banned salughterhouses from selling green tripe, so if you want to try this yourself, you’re out of luck. But on that lovely warm evening, I learned that a few Oglala Lakota women could turn cow guts into magic. They didn’t use all of the colors on the culinary palate to make that meal, but with what they did use, they communciated culture and history; love and family. To me, they cooked food well.