Sopa de Mondongo

September 24, 2011

I just splattered my face, body, and clothes with cow’s blood.

My grandpa Fidel left at 4:00am this morning for the city to buy mondongo, cow hoofs, and vegetables. Mondongo is the intestines of a cow, which are left over during butchering. Sopa de Mondongo or intestine soup is a popular Honduran dish. The intestines and cow hoofs are cooked in a gigantic pot for over 24 hours until they are soft and flavorful (albeit a little bit chewy). At the very end they add in potaste, potato, yucca, plantain, cabbage, and corn. The result is a heaping bowl of delicious veggie and intestine soup.

My host mom and I had finished scraping the poop from the intestines (a necessary step before cooking) and had moved on to the hoofs. First cutting off the thin layer of furry skin and then letting them soak in boiling water. When they were hot we beat them against a large rock like a baseball bat until the hard shell that covers the hoof went flying off. I managed to send one flying successfully onto the roof but the second rebounded towards me spraying me with tiny drops of blood.

I wonder if the Tide To Go Pen inventors ever imagined that I would need it to clean cow’s blood off my clothes.