Mean Greens

Photo by Cynthia

Tonight's dinner was actually inspired by two leftovers. We had the beet greens from the recent attempt at the beet galette, and we still had some of Cynthia's Jade Soup.

First, though, are the simple, seared halibut steaks seasoned with salt, pepper and smoked paprika. They are topped with a chiffonade of quick-sauteed beet greens that are goosed with a touch of citrus.

I sometimes add a bit of a crushed vitamin C tablet if I want to add some citrus acid with out making everything taste like lemon or lime. I have read that citric acid is sometimes sold in the kosher section as "sour salt," but I have yet to find it. I just started using "Fruit Fresh," which is a mixture of citric and ascorbic acid, sold with the canning products. It works well, but has some additives. Use sparingly; a little goes a long way.

I poured some of Cynthia's lima and green bean soup into a blender with some mint, basil, parsley and olive oil. On the plate it was paired with a sauce of pureed roasted red and yellow peppers.

On the side was an amuse-bouche of celery root-fennel chowder. Diced celeriac and fennel were roasted for about thirty minutes, then simmered in a blend of beef and chicken stock, strained, and served with a kiss of lemon.

The surprise, though, was the beet greens; tender and pungent, but not bitter, they have a unique taste all their own.

Branzino!

Photo by Cynthia

Branzino, aka European and Mediterranean seabass, is a beautiful, succulent fish. It was simple as can be to grill whole. Purchased cleaned and scaled from our fishmonger, I had only to clip the sharp pectoral and dorsal fins, rinse and dry, and rub the fish with salt and pepper. It was grilled on medium high heat for 5 minutes on each side.

We plated it on pappardelle which had been dressed in muscado vinegar and porcini-infused olive oil, and topped with a pan-cooked relish of diced tomatoes, olives, artichoke hearts, cherry peppers and pepperoncini.

When the fish was served, after removing the head and tail, the skin easily pulled away. The top half of the flesh needed to be very carefully sliced and pulled from the bones. After that maneuver, the skeleton was gently but painlessly pulled from the remaining half.

We did encounter a couple of pin bones as we ate, but they were easy to detect and remove. And it was worth it. The fish is buttery and delicious.

The Beet Goes On

Photos by Cynthia

Continuing my fascination with vegetable galettes, I tried a version with orange baby beets. The thinly sliced beet coins were quite small, and with the shrinkage that occurred during the cooking, they didn't hold together as a pancake. But they had brilliant layered yellow colors, including a saffron-like tinge around the edges and were delectably crisp and caramelized. It was really more of a roast beet hash. They were topped with rings of shallots, grilled bay scallops and avocado.

The beets accompanied a pan-seared salmon filet, lacquered with the plum sauce from our recent grilled duck, set atop grilled zucchini planks.

All in all, a dish of glowing sunset color, just right for the end of the day.

Puff Piece

Photos by Cynthia

We were invited to a birthday party tonight and wanted to bring something festive.

Several years ago on the original Japanese Iron Chef, I watched a challenger make what was his signature meat pie. I don't have any memory of what went into it, only it's distinctive shell: a warm, sunburst pastry crust. Last night I attempted a replica for a lamb tourtiere.

An onion and about a half of a pound of shitake mushrooms were slowly caramelized in a large pan. A pound of ground lamb and one link of Mexican chorizo were added to the pan and browned.. The mixture was seasoned with salt, pepper, freshly ground cumin seeds and some garam masala. I added some extra roasted garlic cloves that Cynthia prepared for her sumptuous tomato pie. (If we all ask hard enough, Cynthia may be coaxed into writing her own post about her creative spin on tomato pie).

After the meat was browned, some julienned sun-dried tomatoes and chopped artichoke hearts went into the pan with some fresh thyme, chopped mint, parsley, and cilantro.

Meanwhile, two sheets of puff pastry were laid out and gently rolled. In our small hot kitchen and humid climate, keeping dough at the right temperature is tricky. I had the top and bottom crusts on different pans that when in and out of the refrigerator to keep them from getting too warm and sticky.

When the filing was ready and slightly cooled, I pressed it into a shallow soup bowl that I used as a mold and positioned the mound of filling in the center of the bottom crust. The top crust was then laid over the the filling and bottom crust, tucked tight around the edge of the filling mound.

Using a large mixing bowl as a template, I placed the bowl over the pie and cut a circle in both crusts, leaving a margin of about two inches outside the mound. I the cut slits in the margin, folding both layers of crust into triangles to form the rays of the sun.


After cutting vents into the top of the mound, the pie went into a 400º oven. I was sharing the oven with Cynthia's tomato pie, so mine was on the top rack. It was done in about 25 minutes.

The puff pastry has a mind of it's own and some of the triangle rays morphed into odd proportions, and in hindsight, I would have liked to have brushed an egg wash on the crust for a sunny glow.

But heck, we were late to the party as it was.

Duck and Cover

Photos by Cynthia

After days of torrential rain the monsoons let up and I could finally fire up the grill for the duck I had waiting patiently in the fridge.

I'm still experimenting with how best to get smoke from the new gas grill. The old, beloved grill - a generous gift from my brother - was a hybrid: it was a three-burner gas grill with an adjustable basket above the burners for holding charcoal and/or wood chunks and chips. As a gas grill it never got very hot but it would light the coals in record time, and as a slow-roaster or smoker it could keep relatively consistent heat over hours of cooking.

That old favorite, alas, endured one monsoon too many. After replacing many internal parts, proving the adage that rust never sleeps, all the innards eventually collapsed into a rusty heap, and to my dismay I discovered that the grill model was discontinued.

Overall I prefer grilling over chunk charcoal, and we maintain a classic Weber kettle, but there is no beating the convenience of flipping on the gas for quickly searing a steak, or the ease in maintaining a constant low temperature for hours on end.

With nothing remotely like it in our price range, we considered getting a cheap "disposable" gas grill and a low-end smoker,but that just seemed like bad economics. We settled on a modest but reasonably well-made, straight forward gas grill.

I'm still exploring the best way to inject smoke into the cooking equation. With past grills I have had bad luck with foil logs and cast-iron smoker boxes to hold wood chips. Either they just never got hot enough to produce much smoke, or they turned into little infernos that flared up and, even when set up for indirect cooking, could char the meat and upset the cooking temperature. I usually ended up just throwing wood chunks or chips right onto the burner. It usually works well (depending on the burner) but the resulting acidic ashes greatly shorten the life of the grill.

In my current set up, the grill has three burners covered with angles steel deflector plates. I've removed the deflectors from the two left burners and placed a cast-iron smoker box balanced right on top of those two burners. filled with a big chunk of hickory and some soaked cherry wood chips, the box gets enough heat to generate decent smoke.

Here we have our patient duck perched on a beer-can stand (minus the can). The duck has been rinsed inside and out, pat dried. The skin has been pierced all over (being careful not to puncture the flesh) and rubbed all over with sea salt, ground ginger and garam masala. The duck is positioned over the third burner on the right, with the smoker box on the right burners.


The two left burners will be turned on about 3/4 high. The right burner will not be used unless you want a re-enactment of the Pillar of Fire.

Close the cover and walk away. If your grill cover has a reliable thermometer, check the temperature periodically and adjust to maintain between 300 and 350 degrees. Rotate the duck 180º every 45 minutes.

Two and a half hours later, it looked like this:

It smelled unbelievable.

We served it with ginger rice and a make-shift plum sauce.

The plum sauce was made from halved red and black plums with skin left on and simmered in water with ground ginger and honey. When the plums were soft the mixture was pureed with a hand blender and strained back into the pot to reduce. We adjusted seasonings right before serving.

The plum sauce was lackluster.

But the duck was worth waiting for.

Couched Potato

Photo by Cynthia

Several weeks ago I was reading an old Harold McGee article about how pots and pans deliver heat to food and then release the food when we want it to. He made several dozen potato galettes to test the properties of different pans.

I had never made a galette, and a couple of days later as I was figuring out how to incorporate a lone sweet potato into a dish with kingklip filets, I remembered McGee lovingly describing his flat, layered potato cakes cooked to gentle crispiness in his cast-iron skillet, and how he would slide it out of the pan onto an inverted pot lid for flipping back into the skillet.

Thus inspired, I cut paper-thin slices of the sweet potato, layering them - slightly overlapped - in a heated 10" pan with a little grape seed oil and butter. They were topped with salt, pepper, thyme, shaved red onion and sliced mushrooms.

After about ten minutes on medium-high heat, the galette was ready to flip. I, however, was not ready to try flipping; I was afraid of disturbing the mushrooms on top, so I gave it a few minutes under the broiler which worked quite well.

I have since successfully flipped an onion-and-mushroom-topped galette, using the classic technique of sliding the cake onto a pot lid, inverting the pan onto the lid, flipping them over together and removing the lid. I've found, however, that a topping like mushrooms keeps the top potato layer from contacting the pan surface, preventing it from browning correctly. In cases like that, the broiler probably does work best.

Since then I have used regular white potatoes and parsnips. The picture above features Yukon golds. Any root vegetable could work well.

Next, I think I'm going to try beets.

The Medical Tourist

A recent edition of the New York Time Series "Well" featured a story called "The Medical Tourist." It featured a young woman who has moved to New York City and is living there solely for her cancer treatment at Memorial Sloan-Kettering.

This hit home for us not just because we also spent some time at Sloan-Kettering, but because it put a name to our activities as a family as we traveled the country seeking treatment for Henry.

We were Medical Tourists: visiting, sometimes residing in locales away from home for medical reasons.

Our medical tourism took us to Savannah, Memphis, Durham NC, and New York City.

As we look back on the unbelievable last two years we had with Henry, amidst all the horror, anguish and pain, we also can see that we filled those days with activity, adventure, and fun.

Driven by Henry's sense of wonder and joy of life, we took every opportunity to explore, play, and savour whatever unique activities a community had to offer.

Henry said it best. We were on a plane headed for Memphis to begin treatments at St. Jude. As the plane lifted off he declared: "The adventure begins!"

The adventure really began in Savannah. Since it is an hour's drive from us, Savannah was more of a commute, but with two of Henry's three surgeries performed there and about one hundred daily round trips for chemo, radiation, and various sundry treatments, we spent a lot of time in that unique city. At first, our impulse was to get in and out as soon as possible, but after a while we took the time to enjoy a bit of what Savannah had to offer.

Henry liked to spend time on River Street, a charming, if touristy, row of historic buildings facing the Savannah river. We dined at many of the pub-like restaurants that have "grog" or "boar's head" as part of their name. Henry loved the old-timey sweet shops that dapple the brick and cobblestone street.


We took advantage of an after-dark carriage ride, winding through old Savannah. Henry tested the willing driver on her knowledge of all the ghost stories of this most-haunted of American cities.

Henry's favorite restaurant was the Pirate House, a truly fascinating building made up of old structures from different periods that merged together over time with a network of mysterious tunnels below. He was enthralled by more ghost stories and always enjoyed a "cocktail" served in a mug shaped like a pirate's boot.

When our treatment plan took us to St. Jude, Henry had to deal with brain surgery, physical, occupational and speech therapies, radiation therapy, and classes to maintain his schoolwork. Henry and Mama had to reside in Memphis for over two months, with Dad commuting back and forth from his job to join them whenever possible. Henry and Mama were stranded at the Ronald McDonald house without a car, so when Dad came we would rent a car and take in as much of Memphis as time (and stamina) would allow.

We spent some time at the Peabody Hotel, whose famous ducks swim in the lobby by day, and led by the Duck Master in a ritual duck parade to the elevator for their night's rest on the roof. Henry was one of the guest duck masters.

We visited the Memphis Zoo several times. We visited the National Ornamental Metal Museum, which includes displays of wonderful metal sculptures as well as working studios and classes.

We visited the National Civil Rights Museum which occupies the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated.

Of course we visited Graceland. We were joined by cousin Penton's family.

We watched the barges slowly float under the bridge on the Mississippi River.

And there was the food.

Henry had always been a picky eater with a small appetite, but that dramatically changed. While it is true that his treatments often included steroids which spiked his hunger, it is also true that as he grew older, he became more adventurous and became willing, sometimes eager, to try almost anything. And after months of hospital cafeteria dining, I believe that our whole family drew literal and figurative strength and nurturing through our search for interesting, satisfying, and fun food.

We explored Argentinian influenced Churrascaro at Texas De Brazil. We sampled ribs and fried pickles at BB King's on Beale Street. Henry enjoyed crepes from a street vendor. We had lobster pizza from Spindini's wood-burning oven. We enjoyed Lolo's, The Rendezvous, Paulette's, Felicia Suzanne's, the Flying Fish, Corky's, Bigfoot's Cafe, and Automatic Slim's.

Henry developed a surprising love of Sushi. His favorite sushi place in Memphis was Bluefin, a chic and trendy hangout where Henry tried several times to order the sea urchin which was on the menu but always sold out.

Without a doubt our favorite place in Memphis is McEwan's. Henry agreed with their claim of having the best mac 'n' cheese in the world. They introduced us to soba noodles, and featured an award-winning banana cream pie, as well as Alex Hailey's family recipe for black-eyed pea cake. They treated us like royalty, and one of the waitresses became pen pals with Henry.

When Henry recurred, he entered a clinical trial at Duke University Hospital in Durham, NC. This experimental chemo treatment involved sporadic trips to Durham for about a week every month or so over the course of about five months. Durham is a sleepy little town compared to Memphis and Savannah, but we found some treasures.

The Museum of Life + Science has some wonderful interactive exhibits as well as the Magic Wing Butterfly House.We also drove a couple of hours to take Henry to Carowinds amusement park.


When it came to food, there was a burgeoning restaurant scene blossoming on Ninth Street, fueled by the recently closed George's Garage. Our favorite is Vin Rouge, a classic bistro with delectable sweetbreads, a hearty cassoulet, and perfectly cooked seafood. We also enjoyed upscale Greek food at Pappas Grill, breakfast at Elmo's Diner, and Tex-Mex at the Blue Corn Cafe.

During one of our stays we ate a Texas Roadhouse right next to our hotel. Henry noticed all of the photos on the wall honoring those who managed to consume the Big Larry: a two pound beef sirloin. Henry swore that on a future trip I was to take on the Big Larry. So, on our last visit to Durham, when we found that Henry was unceremoniously dropped from the clinical trial, I took on the Big Larry.

It was harder than I thought it would be.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute in New York was our Hail-Mary: a clinical trial utilizing a radioactive isotope injected applied into the cranial-spinal fluid that was to directly attack the tumor. With the qualifying test, a test dose, and the first real treatment dose, we made three week-long trips to Manhattan, usually staying at the Ronald McDonald house on the upper east side.

On May 6, 2008, Henry celebrated his 12th birthday during that first trip, and we made the most of it. What he wanted more than anything was to visit the Nintendo Center, and that became the centerpiece of all our visits to New York. He tried out new games for the Nintendo wii and DS, and always left the store with new action figures, tee shirts and hats.

On that birthday we lunched at the Hard Rock Cafe and feasted on sushi that night at Haru.

On subsequent visits, we rode the giant ferris wheel at Toys "R" Us, and spent an afternoon at the Museum of Natural History. We dined at LeSteak Bistro and Les Halles Brasserie. We had a luscious panna cotta at Petaluma and Henry loved the grilled cheese sandwich at the Irish pub Finnegan's Wake. We searched, with no success, for the best New York Style pizza.

The warmest times were had at Cafe Luka, a family operation that treated Henry as one of their own, and at Finestra, a cozy little Italian cafe where we were befriended by the talented guitarist who performed there. He played lovely classical and flamenco inspired pieces, as well as a welcome Beatles medley.


We left New York in mid June, heavy with the knowledge that the trial treatment could not stop the progression of Henry's tumors. In July we tried an experimental drug that he could take at home. By August that, too, was discontinued.

On September 29, 2008, the adventure ended.

It is impossible to look back on those two years without reliving the horror, the pain and despair we all felt. But we also can remember the many, many wonderful, joyous times we had together. Buoyed by Henry's hope, faith and spirit, we all lived life to its fullest.

Especially Henry, who lived a lifetime.


Cross Posted from Henry's Blog