KONINGSKOS
I don’t remember the first time I tasted it. It arrived in my life like memory itself… soft, slow-cooked, and timeless. Curry tripe and trotters is a dish that had always been there, simmering in the breath of old stories and the steam of satisfaction. As a small boy, I didn’t know it was called koningskos and that it was once reserved for the eldest men seated furthest from the kitchen, yet closest to the ancestors. I only knew I wanted it on my birthday.
Other children my age asked for cake. My sister wanted pickled onions. I, however, wanted my mother’s mild curry of tripe and pig’s trotters. Such was my devotion to this dish that every trip we ventured to the shop, I’d search the butcher’s fridge counter for that familiar pale treasure waiting behind the cling wrap. Even if they only had trotters, I’d ask my mom to buy them and keep them in the freezer until they did have tripe available, or vice versa. Her eyes would flicker with both amusement and something deeper… perhaps a shared respect for a traditional meal not made lightly nor without love.
Before it even made it to my plate, the house would be perfumed with bay leaves, roasted masala, and the unmistakable scent of nostalgia. I’d sit in front of my steaming bowl with ceremony, sucking the gelatin from trotters, chewing on soft, honeycombed tripe, and decorating the bones around my plate’s rim in a proud display of effort and joy.
Each bite was a slow celebration that somehow felt earned.
I didn’t know then that this was food of honour and of economy. Nor did I know that what I asked for so freely had once been held back, portioned carefully for elders whose hands worked cattle, wielded wisdom, and knew the soil. That once, it was not a child’s dish, but a man’s privilege.
The craving has certainly not receded into memory, folded between birthdays and butcher visits. The want still sits with me, calling to me as a man and as a boy, gilded by a familiar bone necklace reminiscent of an archaeological discovery found in the tender centre of remembrance.
